1935 Grocery Store

[launderess]

IIRC, No.

Original Tide like many other detergents the world over to follow was based on alkylbenzene sulfonates.

SLS while having good cleansing properties tends to create tons of froth (one reason it is included in shampoos and body cleansers), but lacks the cleaning power of ABS surfactants for "heavy duty" laundry detergents especially in hard water.

 

[stan]

Thank You Laundress

For giving the background of the Dreft, (knew you'd have more info about that than I )

Freddy,
sorry I'm unable to post a link, (just not computer savvy) but if your interested, you can Google "Robert A Duncan P&G"
This article explains the story I mentioned above, better than I did, and is a interesting read.

Robert A Duncan made the trip to Germany in 1931, the Germans had previously been working with a "wetting agent" that was obtained from the "bile' of slaughtered cattle. This was due to necessity, because of the food shortage, and shortage of fats.
They were using this "wetting" agent for the dying of textiles.

As for the "soaps" used prior to "detergents" that we see in the vintage photo, one must realize that there was much more involved in creating "laundry" soaps, be that bars, or powdered, than most people realize.

It was more than just grating up a bar of bath soap. Laundry soap was made totally different than bath soap.

For effective laundry soap, or what was considered in 1935 to be effective, was the important purification process that soap makers used at that time. P&G being one of those "soap makers"

First was the choice of fats, and fat percentages used to make the soap, and the percentage of the NaOH (lye) used for saponification of the selected fats. Second, was then the removal of the glycerine from the soap, and the "purification" of. Which was the neutralization of any left over NaOH, (sodium hydroxide) And removal of about two thirds of the remaining water.

After this process, they had something very different than bath or facial soap.

In the right water conditions (water conditions being the operative words here) this type of soap can be very effective for cleaning.

Here in the U.S, after the WWII, (1945) Tide was introduced, and as Laundress has explained that by the 1950's quite a few "soaps" were bumped by detergents, or remade into detergents, using the same name as there former.

 

[kenmoreguy89]

Oh Okay thanks for all the info

You know, always thought and knew at Oxydol like a non Synthetic based "detergent" rather than a laundry soap and this because as you can read on their old ads they claimed many times about it's difference from soap flakes or any other granulated soap about needing less and washing whiter than any other granulates soap...so even if it was still made from soap guess it was anyway different from normal/regular laundry soap...

So guess something changed in the composition,  maybe it had something more than others? Maybe? I likely wrongly  knew it always had  oxy bleaching along...but at this point looks  it just was later when it turned into a synthetic detergent.... who knows?
As Stan says absolutely a laundry soap granulated and not  is very  different from a soap for bathing or beauty/personal care purposes....

And of course different recipes can make of a soap greater than another....so maybe Oxydol just had the greatest recipe of laundry soap.

About Dreft well, yes I did know the same that it was initially a "mild" detergent  suitable only  for lightly soiled and woollens and then it was changed in a more powerful formula and sold for babyes laundry, like it is today....

[this post was last edited: 9/30/2012-06:09]

 

[launderess]

Mr. Duncan came upon a substance long used in Europe for stain removal, ox gall (bile). Indeed one can still purchase oxgall soaps today all over the EU and UK, but in particuar Germany for use in laundry stain removal.

The German company that was doing experiments with oxgall and had isolated the key chemicals was I.G. Farben. They would later go on to develop Zyklon B orginally as a pesticide and rodentcide gas but later used by Nazi Germany to murder thousands by gasing them to death. I.G. Farben also requested and took delivery of hundreds of forced labour during the war to work in it's plants and to use as human experiments for various chemicals and other substances in development.

 

[kenmoreguy89]

Thanks Stan

Stan that article was very interesting!

Shared  it here for you:

http://acswebcontent.acs.org/landmarks/landmarks/tide/duncan.html

 

[stan]

I found it interesting

the course of events that took place, that have led us now, to something we give no notice of, ordinary staple (TIDE)
Who would have ever thought that the old saying " necessity is the mother of invention" would have applied to something we all have sitting in our laundry rooms!
Starvation of one country, and 15 years of work, and testing by another, to make possible!

 

[launderess]

If It Hadn't Been One Thing Would Have Been Another

Face it, soap had been around for hundreds of years and was a *very* mature product for cleaning especially for laundry. Where that task came in unless one had vast amounts of clean, hot and soft water the stuff required quite allot of effort and even then results were uneven.

Henkel's Persil pushed the envelope and sooner or later someone would have invented heavy duty "detergents" and or at least surfactants capable of handling modern laundry problems.

 

[stan]

Dear

not sure what you mean? is it, that we should minimize ?

 

[stan]

Oh and

Thank you Freedy for posting the link.

 

[wayupnorth]

Dreft

There was just a commercial on tv for it. Designed especially for babies clothes in convenient liquid with a baby on the label. So it must be still available.

 

[stan]

Yes

See a lot of it around, here, cant say when I used it last, but have had a customer tell me, that it's the only detergent she can use on her husbands clothes, as everything else causes a skin reaction?? She uses the powdered one (pink box)