Save Womens Lives

History of Washing Machines

by Lee Maxwell

ii

Save Womens Lives: History of Washing Machines

About the Author

Lee M. Maxwell Ph.D.Professor of Electrical Engineering, Retired

Dr. Maxwell spent nearly 30 years guiding the learning experience of aspiring electrical engineers. He has coauthored one other book, “The Theory of Graphs —a basis for network theory.”

Since 1986 he and his wife Barbara have amassed the world’s largest and most comprehensive set of old and unusual washing machines, having been awarded the

Guinness Book of Records Certifi cate for the collection. The museum 3 miles west of Eaton, Colorado houses nearly 1000 machines and is open by appointment.

In addition to continuing his fi nding and restoring activities for the washing machines he is building a comprehensive library of historical data about the washers, the people who developed them and themanufacturing companies. This library is an essential and integral part of the museum.

PUBLISHEROldewash35901 WCR 31Eaton, CO 80615www.oldewash.com

Copyright 2003 by Lee M. Maxwell. Except in the case of brief quotations in articles or reviews, no part of this book may be electronically transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means or in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission of the publisher.

CREDITS: Permission to print the Coat Of Arms, Fig 2.3, has been kindly granted by The Worshipful Company of Launderers, London, UK. Patent drawings used herein were extracted from the United States Patent Offi ce Internet site, www.uspto.gov. Sources of other materials are cited within the text.

Library of Congress Control Number: LCCN 2003091513

International Standard Book Number: ISBN 0-9729710-0-9

Book number ____________ First Edition

BOOK DESIGNAnvil Graphicswww.anvilgraphics.com

PRINTERInterPress LimitedHong Kong

Fig. 0.0 ca 1920 Butterfl y

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In Appreciation

This book is 100% due to the only woman in this world who has not only had to endure, but has been a willing partner to a guy while he was hauling home almost a thousand old and unusual washing machines. Acquiring the collection has earned the Guinness Book of Records Certifi cate and by all rights there should also be a category for the wife who does all the pampering to be listed there too. If Barbara would have permitted it, her picture would have been on the cover of this book. Mushiness is not one of the author’s attributes, so enough said.

Along the way each one of our children, Bruce, Susan, Judy and Michael have assisted in one way oranother and that help has meant a lot. Unless another home is found for the collection within the next 30 years someone among them is going to be faced with the frustration of inheriting more than a 1000 old washing machines. That should be suitable revenge for not listening to my advice when he or she was a teenager.

Two irreplaceable washing machine collector friends, David Dinsmore and Bob Moss, have left this world and they along with their families, especially Patty and Jo, should know that they have been remem-bered myriad times during this effort.

Other collector cronies of highly valued friendship and who have been of essential help along the way include: Emil and Eli Weyerts, Lee Dederich, Bill Gibson and Jim Watson. Each of them has done favors above and beyond the call. Not a collector, but Ralph Prior holds the rank of junior assistant washingmachine hunter. Retrieving 300 pound washers from dimly lit basements is an unsung and heroic part of this hobby.

There have been many who have, along the way, assisted the development of the museum through gifts of machines or who have otherwise helped in locating them. They should know that the “fi nding” is an absolute necessity to the effort and many thanks are extended. Unloading, moving and re-moving 200–500 pound washing machines is a job for husky and kindly souls. Each of the crew at Eaton Grove Nursery is surely someday to be rewarded for his magnifi cent help. MB, Garf and Nook, neighborhood kids, have all gone on hunting expeditions and deserve mention.

The entire operation would have been much less successful if it had not been for the computing exper-tise of our son Michael who was almost old enough to have begun his stint in the US Marines by the time he realized his fi rst name wasn’t “Damnit Mike.” Without him sustaining my computer operation and the Internet web site this whole thing could not have been so attainable or nearly so rewarding.

Dr. Charles Neidt, a long time friend and colleague, and Barbara have kindly provided necessaryeditorial assistance concerning the correctness of the language used herein.

After feeding the words and pictures into the hopper of a graphics design person, it takes theimagination, artistic skill and patience of a person like Craig McDowall to make them into a book. The result of his effort is greatly appreciated and applauded.

A special appreciation is extended to the thousand or so women who had previously used thosemachines in my collection. Hopefully each of them had as much enjoyment and satisfaction out of their washer that has been afforded the author.

iv

Prologue v

1 Why This Book and About It 1

2 Early Washing Machine History 5

3 Milestones In The Development of Washing Machines 12

4 The Kinds of Washing Machines 21

5 The Companies 39

6 More Unusual Machines 59

7 Wringers, Wringer Benches and Mangles 66

8 Safety and Unsafety Issues 72

9 Advertising and Marketing 77

10 Patents and www.uspto.gov 84

11 Power For Washing Machines 88

12 The Web Site www.oldewash.com 93

13 The Hunt 95

14 The Museum 103

15 Restoration 106

16 Other Collectibles, Collectors and Collections 110

17 Laundries 114

18 Decals 118

19 The Worth of Washing Machines 121

20 Trivia and The Future 123

List of Figures* 125

Bibliography 127

Table of Contents

Save Womens Lives: History of Washing Machines

*Additional views of the machines pictured in the book may be found at www.oldewash.com by searching for a particular machine by ID number. The List of Figures, pp 125-126, contains the ID number (in parentheses) for each machine. By using the patent numbers [in brackets] drawings and specifi cations for each of the patents may be obtained from www.uspto.gov.

v

Prologue

In the industrial part of our planet the washing machine has become a matter-of-fact domesticappliance. Unlike the radio, television, computer, airplane, spacecraft and even the automobile which all came upon us fairly recently andsomewhat abruptly, the washing machine has been in various evolutionary or developmental stages for centuries. Although there were some crucial periods of development the washing machine sort of snuck in the backdoor with not a lot of fanfare.

Fourth of July and fall festival parades very commonly include at least one, if not a dozen or more 1910s and 20s model T Fords, and other autos of the same vintage, being proudly driven down Main Street in pursuit of the local high school band. There have been numerous TV documentaries produced featuring history of the radio, computer, airplane, spacecraft, automobile, and even television itself.

Have you ever seen more than one washing machine in a parade, let alone a TV documentary about washers? Yet, in 1920 there were in excess of 700 American companies producing washing machines. And each of these companies manufac-tured machines which would rival the esthetics and mechanical pleasantries of any 1920 Speedster in the NE Colorado T Club.

The sole purpose of this book is to foster an awareness and appreciation of the way we washed. The main focus of this fi rst edition is on the evolu-tion of the washer from its early history up to the time the fully automatic machines came about.

The material is intended to be comprehensive and factual but it is admittedly not complete.

The part of the title, Save Womens Lives, has been plagiarized from lettering placed on the wooden framed wringer of a 1907 washing machine.

The remainder of the title, History of Washing Machines, appears to be original as there seems to be no other, at least in English.

More than being about saving women’s lives and a history of washing machines these pages display how an innocent hobby can become an obsession of consequence.

It has been fun writing the words herein. It is the sincere intent that you will fi nd pleasure in reading them.

Fig. 0.1 ca 1900 Rirbria

1

Why This Book,and About It

Chapter 1

Why This Book, and About It

2

I n grandma Minnie’s estimation, if there was a perfume called “scent of satisfaction ,”

its fragrance would be that of a huge pile of just-fi nished laundry. Indeed it was satisfying to have the chore of Mondays done and to be able to sit down, have a cup of tea, and just relax for a bit. During her tenured term of doing laundry, from about 1890 to 1950, grandma, who lived to be nearly 95, had spanned the “Washing Machine Age” during which much of the innovation and deployment of home laundry devices took place. Although there is evidence of washing machines existing in the 1400s, before the mid 1800’s there were relatively few factory-made clothes washers. And since the late 1930’s, few remarkable changes have occurred in the way washing is done.

With modern plumb-ing we no longer have to heat the water on the old cook stove, pour it in the washer and rinse tubs then after the wash haul it outside. In rural areas, before REA electrical distribution services became available, the farmer would usually have to stay around the house for a while on Monday morning to get the old kick-start, 2-cycle gasoline washing machine engine running. Many of the more experienced generation can pro-duce evidence, in the form of scars, which attest to past dangers of using a wringer washing machine.

Technology has taken people of industrial-ized countries a fair way from the rock, used to

pound the clothes at the riverbank, to the modern rectangular shaped white box with appropriate buttons for permanent press and delicate fabrics. What would Minnie have thought if she were given the choice of “delicate” or “permanent press”? Certainly the pair of bib-overalls that had been on Garibaldi (granddad) for the past week, or two,

would not have fi t within either category. The marvelous way of how we got from the lowly rock to the big white box with its 48 page instruc-tion book, written in 3 languages, explaining which of 24 buttons to push, has gone almost unnoticed. There is not much literature on the subject, nor is there any comprehensive public museum display of the evolution of the washing machine.

Washing machines do not have the allure of other old mechanical relics such as cars, trac-tors, internal combus-tion engines or gasoline

pumps, where, for each, there are literally hun-dreds of proud and enthusiastic collectors. Have you ever stood in an antique mall and wondered why you see more butter churns than washing machines? With rare exception, antique dealers avoid washing machines like the plague. At least one contemporary antique columnist has claimed washing machines to be little more than “jonque”. Could it be that the washing machine is

“the ugly duckling of antiquity?”

Having retired in 1985 from an enjoyable 30-year career of trying to guide the learning experience of aspiring electrical engineers, collecting old and Fig. 1.0 ca 1910 Gamages

Fig. 1.1 ca 1908 Rue

Save Womens Lives

3

unusual washing machines seemed like the thing to do. Especially since golfi ng, fi shing, shuffl e boarding, atmospheric ballooning, bungee jumping or ballroom dancing held little attraction. Having had no prior signifi cant experience with washing machines, these past 17 years have indeed been a substantial and exciting learning opportunity.

This book is the report of what has been learnt and includes, in addition to an extensive set of photographs, a discussions on:

The history of washing machines

The kinds of washers

Patent information related to clothes washers

Advertising and marketing illustrations

Wringers, wringer benches and mangles

Safety issues

The washing machine companies

The associated Internet site

The worth of washing machines

Experiences of the hunt for washers

The museum

Restoration of the machines

Other washing machine collectibles

Other collections

Old industrial laundry equipment

Washing machine trivia and things to be done

It is only the tools and machines of washing about which this book is written. Left for others to present is the information about such important and related matters as soap, detergents, and the social, economic, energy and ecological impacts of washing systems. Ruth Schwartz Cowan [1] provides an excellent general discussion of the so-cial history of American technology and is a good supplement for the more specifi c topics presented here.

It is presumed that the development and manu-facture of the washing machine was a great and wonderful thing to have happened. The presump-tion is based on the desire and merit of having

clean clothes and having the convenience of cleaning them. At least until the latter part of the 20th century it was the women who were primarily responsible for doing the wash and the washing machine has been touted by most as having made life better for the girls. Just some 200 years ago

personal hygiene did not seem to be as high a pri-ority as it is today and even nobility rarely washed [2]. There was a practice in parts of old Europe to hang the dirty clothes in the attic and do washing twice a year. If you are not going to wash at all or just twice a year, then the washing machine seems to have created work for women instead of making life better.

Technological development in the arena of com-mercial laundry equipment seemed to have out-paced that for domestic washing machines, at least up until the 1920s. During the late 1800s and well into the 1920s folks with money commonly sent their washing out to be done by the commercial laundries or poor laundresses. In her book, Susan Strasser [3] professes that the development of the domestic washing machine was a capitalistic con-spiracy waged by large domestic washing machine companies against the smaller commercial laundry fi rms. Professor Strasser defi nitely conveys an atti-tude of despicability toward the domestic washing

The paradoxical, and perhaps poignant, title “Save Womens Lives”is imprinted on the wringer of a 1907washing machine.