The Dramatic Easing of Housework Drudgery by New Household Appliances (3)

Vintage 1940s Eureka Tank Vacuum

Electricity revolutionized appliances in another way, powering small motors that could perform work formerly done by muscles. The first such household device, appearing in 1891, was a rotary fan made by the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company; its blades were driven by a motor developed chiefly by Nikola Tesla, a Serbian genius who pioneered the use of alternating current. The second was a vacuum cleaner, patented by a British civil engineer named H. Cecil Booth in 1901. He hit on his idea after observing railroad seats being cleaned by a device that blew compressed air at the fabric to force out dust. Sucking at the fabric would be better, he decided, and he designed a motor-driven reciprocating pump to do the job. Soon the power of the electric motor was applied to washing machines, sewing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers, can openers, coffee grinders, egg beaters, hair dryers, knife sharpeners, and many other devices. At the turn of the century, only about one American family in 15 employed servants, but having such a source of muscle power was devoutly craved by many and was seen as a key indicator of status. As housework was eased by electric motors and the number of servants dropped, such views changed, but some advertising copywriters insisted on describing appliances in social terms: "Electric servants can be depended on—to do the muscle part of the washing, ironing, cleaning and sewing," said a General Electric advertisement in 1917; "Don't go to the Employment Bureau. Go to your Lighting Company or leading Electric Shop to solve your servant problem." The electric servant brigade was rapidly improved. In 1907 an American inventor named James Murray Spangler created a vacuum cleaner that basically consisted of an old-fashioned carpet sweeper to raise dust and a vertical shaft electric motor to power a fan and blow the dust into an external bag. Manufactured by the Hoover Company, which bought the patent in 1908, it was hugely successful, especially after Hoover in 1926 extended the fan motor's power to a rotating brush that "beats as it sweeps as it cleans." Meanwhile, the Electrolux company in Sweden grabbed a sizable share of the market with a very different design for a vacuum cleaner—a small rolling cylinder that had a long hose and a variety of nozzles to clean furniture and curtains as well as carpets.

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The Dramatic Easing of Housework Drudgery by New Household Appliances (2)

THE WASHING MACHINE

No aspect of housework stood in greater need of motor power than washing clothes, a job so slow and grueling when performed manually that laundresses were by far the most sought-after domestic help. In the preelectric era, Mondays were traditionally devoted to doing the laundry. First, the clothes were rubbed against a washboard in soapy water to remove most of the dirt; next they were wrung out, perhaps by running them through a pair of hand-cranked rollers; they were then boiled briefly in a vat on top of the stove; then, after removal with a stick, they were soaped, rinsed, and wrung out again; finally they were hung on a line to dry—unless it was raining. The arrival of electricity prompted many efforts to mechanize parts of this ordeal. Some early electric washing machines worked by rocking a tub back and forth; others pounded the clothes in a tub with a plunger; still others rubbed them against a washboard. A big improvement came in 1922 when Howard Snyder of the Maytag Company designed a tub with an underwater agitator whose blade forced water through the clothes to get the dirt out. The following decade saw the introduction of completely automatic washing machines that filled and emptied themselves. Then wringers were rendered unnecessary by perforated tubs that spun rapidly to drive the water out by centrifugal force. An automatic dryer arrived in 1949, and it was soon followed by models that were equipped with sensors that allowed various temperature settings for different fabrics, that measured the moisture in the clothes, and that signaled when the drying job was done. Like the vacuum cleaner and washing machine, most modern appliances have a long lineage. One, however, seemed to appear out of the blue, serendipitously spawned by the development of radar during World War II. Much of that work focused on a top-secret British innovation called a cavity magnetron, an electronic device that could produce powerful, high-frequency radio waves—microwaves. In 1945 a radar scientist at Raytheon Corporation, Percy Spencer, felt his hand becoming warm as he stood in front of a magnetron, and he also noted that a candy bar in his pocket had softened. He put popcorn kernels close to the device and watched with satisfaction as they popped vigorously. Microwaves, it turned out, are absorbed by water, fats, and sugars, producing heat and rapidly cooking food from the inside. From Spencer's discovery came the microwave oven, first manufactured for commercial use in 1947 and ultimately a fixture in millions of kitchens, although the household versions were not produced until the mid-1960s.  Source: http://www.greatachievements.org/?id=3777  Copyright © 2013 by National Academy of Engineering. All rights reserved FOR OTHER ARTICLES PLEASE VISIT: TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Dramatic Easing of Drudgery by new Household Appliances.(1)

THE STOVE

Consider cooking. In practically all American households by the turn of the 20th century, the work was done on cast iron stoves that burned wood or coal. A few people mourned the passing of fireplace cooking—"The open fire was the true center of home-life," wrote one wistful observer of the changeover in the middle decades of the 19th century—but the advantages of a stove were overwhelming. It used substantially less fuel than a blaze in an open hearth, didn't require constant tending, didn't blacken the walls with soot, didn't spit out dangerous sparks and embers, and, if centrally positioned, would warm a kitchen in winter much more effectively than a fireplace. It was also versatile. Heat from the perforated fire chamber was distributed to cooking holes on the top surface and to several ovens; some of it might also be directed to a compartment that kept food warm or to an apparatus that heated water. But the stove could be exasperating and exhausting, too. The fire had to be started anew each morning and fed regular helpings of fuel—an average of 50 pounds of it over the course of a day. Controlling the heat with dampers and flues was a tricky business. Touching any part of the stove's surface might produce a burn. Ashes were usually emptied twice a day. And a waxy black polish had to be applied from time to time to prevent rusting. In all, an hour or more a day was spent simply tending the stove.

As a heat source for cooking, gas began to challenge coal and wood in the closing years of the 19th century. At that time piped gas made from coke or coal was widely available in cities for illumination, but incandescent lights were clearly the coming thing. To create an alternative demand for their product, many gas companies started to make and market gas stoves, along with water heaters and furnaces. A gas stove had some powerful selling points. It could be smaller than a coal- or wood-burning stove; most of its surface remained cool; and all the labor of toting fuel, starting and tending the fire, and removing the ashes was eliminated. The development of an oven thermostat in 1915 added to its appeal, as did the increasing use of natural gas, which was cheaper and less toxic than the earlier type. By 1930 gas ranges outnumbered coal or wood burners by almost two to one.

Electric stoves were still uncommon. Although they had originated around the turn of the century, fewer than one U.S. residence in 10 was wired for electricity at the time; moreover, such power was expensive, and the first electric stoves used it gluttonously. Another deficiency was the short life of their heating elements, but in 1905 an engineer named Albert Marsh solved that problem with a patented nickel-chrome alloy that could take the heat. In the next decade electric stoves acquired an oven thermostat, matching an important feature of their gas rivals. Meanwhile America was steadily being wired. By the mid-1920s, 60 percent of residences had electricity, and it was fast falling in price. As electric stoves became more competitive, they, like gas stoves, were given a squared-off shape and a white porcelain enamel surface that was easy to clean. They continued to gain ground, receiving a major boost with the introduction in 1963 of the self-cleaning oven, which uses very high temperatures—about 900°F—to burn food residue from oven walls. Today, many households split the difference in stove types, choosing gas for the range and electricity for the oven.

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The Wash Day Blues

        

Before the Washing  machine was invented, women would take their laundry down to the river and wash them. They would beat the laundry against the rocks in a stream, or beat them with the use of a laundry bat, stone or board which was the ancient way of getting the dirt out of the clothes. Another possibility of washing clothes was to put them in a wooden wash tub and trample on them with bare feet. The wet clothes would then be  draped over lines, or hung over bushes and rocks to dry in the hot sunshine. During the Victorian era, the attics were used for hanging laundry. However, most clothes had to be wrung out by hand.  Then along came the wringing machines in the mid-80’s which consisted of two rollers, with a hand crank which an item would be slipped in between the rollers and pressed with the hand crank to remove the excess water. There was no such thing as permanent press, so all clothing had to be ironed when they dried. This is where the flat-iron came in. It would be placed on the kitchen range to be heated. Of course one had to have several of them going at the same time, since they cooled quickly.

The Ironing  board was supported by two chairs or one part on the table and the other on a chair. This was commonly used in the 19^th century. An ironing blanket would be wrapped around the board then topped with a cotton sheet which had to be changed and washed when soiled. Alva Fischer a native of Chicago during the late 1800s after finishing High School wanted to invent something. His mother suggested that he should create something that would help her around the house. So he decided to invent a better washing machine. Using his mother’s existing wash tub, he attached electric pumps to bring the water in and to pump it out, He then attached an agitator to the motor and finally the wringer was also attached to the motor, so there was no hand cranking effort. His first model was unveiled in 1905. Wringers remained a part of washing machines until after World War II. After certain drawbacks,The machine worked well enough for Fisher to sell the design to Westinghouse Corporation.In 1924 the Savage Arms Corporation redesigned its washing machine in order to take full advantage of electricity. As a  result of New Technology, the finished product became  the first washing machine that resembled modern washers. Since the 1924 design, the basic washer design and function have not changed.               

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