A sensitive partner provides marital bliss

The Margin can exclusively report on next year's hot item for the wedding gift list

The Margin can exclusively report on next year's hot item for the wedding gift list. Swedish appliance maker AB Electrolux said it is working on a way to take the drudgery out of house cleaning the world's first self-operating vacuum cleaner.

The cylindrical machine, which took 10 years to develop, moves around a room using sound waves which alert it to an object in its path. When it senses one, it changes direction. Its brain is a microprocessor which has the same capacity as a personal computer.

In a demonstration on television, the vacuum cleaner was shown stopping in front of a champagne flute without knocking it over a very useful facility!