December, 1952, was when Bendix announced the Duomatic Washer-Dryer Combination in the electric model. The gas model followed in a few months. Both as a washer and as a dryer, it rated very well in the Consumer Reports test of washers and dryers around 1954. Unfortunately, AVCO, Aviation corporation, owner of Bendix tied up patent rights for the machine so all other manufacturers were prevented from making a machine that could come anywhere near the performance of the Duomatic. These other machines gave the Washer-Dryer Combination a bad reputation among owners and more importantly among the service people who worked on them. Corporations expended huge outlays of money to design and tool up to make these machines and most never even recovered their investments, let alone made enough money to engage in serious redesigns of their machines. Whirlpool, because they had the great selling power of Sears, was able to re-engineer, from the ground up, from side to side and from front to back, a brand new design for the WP and Kenmore combos, but they were very complicated machines. The Lady Kenmore of the mid 60s had over 1600 parts, as many as a Volkswagon Beetle according to John's (Combo52) next older brother. After the early 60s, there was NO advertising of combos in any media by any manufacturer, except for the page and a half in the Sears catalog. That they lasted as long on the market as they did was a testament to the satisfaction of previous owners, a lingering memory of their existence in some people's minds, the need/niche in the market that they filled and GE's involvement in supplying combos to the apartment & condo builders' market where the no-vent capabilities of the combo allowed spaces to be allocated for the laundry where no venting was possible. Philco left the combo market in 1969-70, but Westinghouse, Easy, Speed Queen, Maytag, Norge and even Whirlpool quietly discontinued their combos earlier in the decade although WP continued supplying them for Sears until GE & Sears abandoned the market in the early 70s. It was sad. I think it was the first major appliance invention to be abandoned; not just a feature, but a whole category of appliance gone, over, finished, kaput.
