Washing machine – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A washing machine (laundry machine, clothes washer, or washer) is a machine to wash laundry, such as clothing and sheets. The term is mostly applied only to machines that use water as opposed to dry cleaning (which uses alternative cleaning fluids, and is performed by specialist businesses) or ultrasonic cleaners. Washing entails immersing, dipping, rubbing, or scrubbing in water usually accompanied by detergent, or bleach. The simplest machines may simply agitate clothes in water; automatic machines may fill, empty, wash, spin, and heat in a cycle. Most washing machines remove substantial amounts of water from the laundry at the end of a wash cycle, but do not completely dry it.

Laundering by hand involves soaking, beating, scrubbing, and rinsing dirty textiles. Before indoor plumbing, the housewife also had to carry all the water used for washing, boiling, and rinsing the laundry; according to an 1886 calculation, women fetched water eight to ten times every day from a pump, well, or spring.[1] Water for the laundry would be hand carried, heated on a fire for washing, then poured into the tub. That made the warm soapy water precious; it would be reused, first to wash the least soiled clothing, then to wash progressively dirtier laundry. Removal of soap and water from the clothing after washing was originally a separate process. First soap would be rinsed out with clear water. After rinsing, the soaking wet clothing would be formed into a roll and twisted by hand to extract water. The entire process often occupied an entire day of hard work, plus drying and ironing.

Clothes washer technology developed as a way to reduce the manual labor spent, providing an open basin or sealed container with paddles or fingers to automatically agitate the clothing. The earliest machines were hand-operated and constructed from wood, while later machines made of metal permitted a fire to burn below the washtub, keeping the water warm throughout the day's washing.

The earliest special-purpose washing device was the scrub board, invented in 1797.[2]

By the mid-1850s, steam-driven commercial laundry machinery were on sale in the UK and US.[3] Technological advances in machinery for commercial and institutional washers proceeded faster than domestic washer design for several decades, especially in the UK. In the US there was more emphasis on developing machines for washing at home, though machines for commercial laundry services were widely used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[4] The rotary washing machine was patented by Hamilton Smith in 1858.[2] As electricity was not commonly available until at least 1930, some early washing machines were operated by a low-speed single-cylinder hit and miss gasoline engine.

After the items were washed and rinsed, water had to be removed by twisting. To help reduce this labor, the wringer/mangle machine was developed.

The mangle used two rollers under spring tension to squeeze water out of clothing and household linen. Each laundry item would be fed through the wringer separately. The first wringers were hand-cranked, but were eventually included as a powered attachment above the washer tub. The wringer would be swung over the wash tub so that extracted wash water would fall back into the tub to be reused for the next load. As implied by the term "mangle," these early machines were quite dangerous, especially if powered and not hand-driven. A user's fingers, hand, arm, or hair could become entangled in the laundry being squeezed, resulting in horrific injuries; unwary bystanders, such as children, could also be caught and hurt. Safer mechanisms were developed over time, and the more hazardous designs were eventually outlawed.[citation needed]

The modern process of water removal by spinning did not come into use until electric motors were developed. Spinning requires a constant high-speed power source, and was originally done in a separate device known as an "extractor". A load of washed laundry would be transferred from the wash tub to the extractor basket, and the water spun out in a separate operation.[5] These early extractors were often dangerous to use, since unevenly distributed loads would cause the machine to shake violently. Many efforts were made to counteract the shaking of unstable loads, such as mounting the spinning basket on a free-floating shock-absorbing frame to absorb minor imbalances, and a bump switch to detect severe movement and stop the machine so that the load could be manually redistributed.

What is now referred to as an automatic washer was at one time referred to as a "washer/extractor", which combines the features of these two devices into a single machine, plus the ability to fill and drain water by itself. It is possible to take this a step further, and to also merge the automatic washing machine and clothes dryer into a single device, called a combo washer dryer.

The first English patent under the category of Washing and Wringing Machines was issued in 1691.[6] A drawing of an early washing machine appeared in the January 1752 issue of "The Gentlemen's Magazine", a British publication. Jacob Christian Schffer's washing machine design was published 1767 in Germany.[7] In 1782, Henry Sidgier issued a British patent for a rotating drum washer, and in the 1790s Edward Beetham sold numerous "patent washing mills" in England.[8] In 1862, a patented "compound rotary washing machine, with rollers for wringing or mangling" by Richard Lansdale of Pendleton, Manchester, was shown at the 1862 London Exhibition.[9]

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Washing machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia