Martin, this was 1963--the year of the great Northeast drought. Up to this year nobody on the Eastern Seaboard thought about water conservation. My Father installed a huge Carrier Central Air Conditioning unit into our new home not one year earlier just under the deadline for water-cooled units in New York City. My Uncle Herb up in New Rochelle had to run the recirculation lines for his rich parents' air conditioner into the pond in their back yard (clever man).
Paul's machine is the second year GE featured the mini-basket and it was a tiny thing that sat on the first iteration of the spiral-ramped Activator. It was designed primarily for delicate little handwashables but when the feature took off, they redesigned it to be closer to its well-known size in the middle of the 1964 model year. And yes, Filter-Flo's were water hogs. Even as a kid I thought that the "SMALL; UNDER 6" setting on the machine was a joke. Three inches less water than the full setting. With the mini-basket there was about 1/3 of a tub full of water underneath the mini-basket in the 1962 models. I'll be very interested to see Paul's video when he shows us how full his model is when he uses the setting. They had lots of problems with oversudsing on these machines anyway; when people started using the mini-baskets even with low-sudsing detergents they had no good idea how much soap to use and I don't think it was indicated yet on the undersides of the lids. Paul? Could we get a close-up?

Paul's machine is the second year GE featured the mini-basket and it was a tiny thing that sat on the first iteration of the spiral-ramped Activator. It was designed primarily for delicate little handwashables but when the feature took off, they redesigned it to be closer to its well-known size in the middle of the 1964 model year. And yes, Filter-Flo's were water hogs. Even as a kid I thought that the "SMALL; UNDER 6" setting on the machine was a joke. Three inches less water than the full setting. With the mini-basket there was about 1/3 of a tub full of water underneath the mini-basket in the 1962 models. I'll be very interested to see Paul's video when he shows us how full his model is when he uses the setting. They had lots of problems with oversudsing on these machines anyway; when people started using the mini-baskets even with low-sudsing detergents they had no good idea how much soap to use and I don't think it was indicated yet on the undersides of the lids. Paul? Could we get a close-up?
