March 28th Celebrates First Washing Machine

In the olden days, people used to wash their clothes by pounding them against rocks or scrubbing them with abrasive sand, washing off the dirt in nearby rivers. Evidence of the existence of ancient detergents was found in Rome, where ashes containing the fat of sacrificial animals were used as soap. Being a laundress was an extremely arduous and unrewarding job back then.

The invention of the washing machine, however, was to become the real game-changer for the world of hygiene.

On 28 March 1797, Nathaniel Briggs, a New Hampshire inventor and businessman, received a patent on a washing machine. The patent, designed for "Clothes Washing", was granted for a machine known as "The Box Mangler." It consisted of a heavy frame containing a large box filled with rocks, resting on a series of long wooden rollers. Washing was laid flat on a sheet and wound around one of the rollers. Two people pulled on levers to move the heavy box back and forth over the rollers. At a time when everything had to be done by hand, such a machine could, as the inventor claimed, spare your time and effort, as well as save you the clothes and... a lot of frustration. The new device was very large and quite expensive, and it required heavy labour to operate.

It was as early as 1851 that James King patented a device that resembles the modern washing machine. The design had a hand-operated rotary drum. This invention gave an impetus to new design ideas - in the United States alone, more than 2,000 patents for clothes washing devices were issued in the next 25 years.

In 1858, Hamilton Smith patented the rotary washing machine.

In 1874 in the USA, William Blackstone was the first to create a washing machine for domestic use and presented it to his wife as a birthday present. The design was quite successful, and Blackstone put it into mass production, selling each washing machine for $2.5.

Meanwhile in Europe, in 1900 Carl Miele began to produce washing machines, whose design was based on the design of the butter churn. Which, in fact, makes a lot of sense given that a year earlier, in 1899, Miele and Reinhard Zinkann had co-founded the factory for making cream separators Miele & Cie.
It was Alva J. Fisher, however, who managed to fully automate the washing machine by equipping it with an electric motor in 1908, the patent being granted in 1910.

From then on, many improvements followed, and finally in the 90's machines had washing, spinning and rinsing modes.

For most people, the invention of the washing machine made life much easier, but for laundresses it was a disaster - their services were no longer needed, and the profession disappeared.

In the city of Eaton, Colorado, USA, Lee Maxwell has gathered a huge collection of washing machines (more than 600). Most of them are still functioning devices; the collector himself has taken apart, cleaned and reassembled them. You can either book a live guided tour of the museum in advance or take a virtual tour on the museum's website. A catalogue of washing machines and a database of more than 20,000 scanned patents for the devices can be found here.

The renowned Swedish medical doctor, academic and public speaker Professor Hans Rosling argued that the washing machine was the greatest invention of the Industrial Revolution as it allowed women to turn a boring washday into a day of reading.

And how about you? What do you do while your washing machine is on?