Thread Number: 38807
POD 2/14/12 (another math equation) BENDIX GYROMATIC |
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Post# 576272 , Reply# 1   2/16/2012 at 04:24 (4,424 days old) by Jetcone (Schenectady-Home of Calrods,Monitor Tops,Toroid Transformers)   |   | |
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and I just learned from an edition of Laundry Age dated April 1,1932 that this was the age of large commercial laundries that did all the home washing in America, and it was under direct attack from washing machine manufacturer's. So Bendix was going straight to the heart of the matter in calling their machine a "home laundry" so you never had to send out your laundry again.
I will scan and post this new piece of laundry history it directly affects the start of home automatic washing machines-which we love soo much! Who knew at one time every town in America had a central laundry that did all the washing for entire neighborhoods?
Central laundries must have been an urban thing don't cha think? On the farm wringers would have been standard, farmer's wives wouldn't have sent out their laundry weekly I don't think. |
Post# 576280 , Reply# 2   2/16/2012 at 06:38 (4,423 days old) by combo52 (50 Year Repair Tech Beltsville,Md)   |   | |
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Post# 576584 , Reply# 5   2/17/2012 at 12:42 (4,422 days old) by Jetcone (Schenectady-Home of Calrods,Monitor Tops,Toroid Transformers)   |   | |
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Post# 576712 , Reply# 6   2/18/2012 at 00:58 (4,422 days old) by Launderess (Quiet Please, There´s a Lady on Stage)   |   | |
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Was common in many urban and surburban areas of not only America but the UK and parts of Europe as well. So yes, the Bendix "Home Laundry" was a frontal assault on the big steam/commercial laundries turff.
Even as far back as the Victorian/Edwardian age there were large commercial (steam) laundries that did the washing for not only hotels, hospitals,and other commercial establishments but domestic wash as well. These businesses made much of the fact that their equipment could (and often did) a better job of washing and ironing laundry than Madame or her laundress could do at home. Pure softened water, special soaps and or detergents, properly made up and applied starches, large mangles for ironing linen without creases and so forth often gave far better results than at home. Often at less price per pound than it costs for a laundress to come in to the home, or take it away to her place. Because these modern "steam" laundries could process vast volumes of laundry quickly households and establishments no longer had to lie in huge stores of linen. Items sent out on Monday for instance were expected to be back on Thursday or sooner. Quite honestly ever since the practice began laundry is the first household chore any housewife sought to get out of, and since these were the days of soaking, boiling, beating, scrubbing, mangling, line drying, starching, drying agian, ironing, airing then folding you can see how happy *anyone* would be to get shot of the task as well as the smells/excess moisture and heat. Being as all this may even by the 1900's housewives began to worry about disease being spread via communal laundries (in most all commercial laundries orders are mixed together in large washers). You didn't know what common diseases lurked in other households (dipthera, typhoid, scarlett fever, measels, etc) or for that matter laundry workers were suffering from. Laundry coming out of a boil wash with very alkaline chemicals,then ironed with a hot iron probably was "sterile" enough for most purposes; but that did no good if the person folding your wash was infected with an illness and coughing up a storm over your stuff. So housewives began (if ever so reluctantly) to start doing their wash at home. Happily semi automatic and later automatic washing machines started appearing. Most cost quite allot of money which limited their reach, but even the crudest devices liberated one from some of the wash day havoc. Ironers and later electric hand irons also did much to ease the burden. Still right up until the 1940's was common for many households to send out wash. WWII changed that as men and women were needed elsewhere, and funds became tight for many homes. The post war "boom" that followed saw an explosion of home appliances including those for laundry. What soon followed was a deliberate advertising blitz to get Madame back into the laundry-room where she has stayed ever since. It should be noted that the fear of disease was one of the reasons behind local laws regarding commercial laundries. This includes the requirement for a licence and the almost universal ban on "taking laundry in" as it were. |