Frigidaire Designers

[Unimatic1140]

I just posted a copy to the Ephemera Library if anyone would like a copy of the July 1957 Appliance Manufacture Magazine. It has a super cool article on the design team of GM Frigidaire Appliances and another one on the introduction of the Maytag Halo-of-Heat dryer.

 

[vacerator]

Back then design

and engineering did not take a back seat to as strict of a budget.
Frigidaire, with GM backing, GE, Westinghouse, and Whirlpool all had plenty of market share. Borg Warner, AMC Kelvinator, and Easy all had room for a piece of the pie still.
Great designers, and engineers and many new ones coming into the field after WW2 ended. They took pride in what they did. Those were also the baby boom years.
Everything was done on drawing boards with pencils. Then technical writers made blueprints. Then tool and die makers formed and forged stamping dies for assembly lines. No robots, no computers.
A millenial couldn't begin to imagine.

 

[moparwash]

Salute to the Sheer Look!

 

[wft2800]

Frigidaire tried to get some market share in Europe with those control-tower pulsator machines, but the market wasn't too keen on top-loaders and especially not on machines with no internal heaters. Given that they already had a perforated drum in the dryer, I wonder why they didn't just use that in a front-load washer? Would have been a piece of piss to engineer from their parts bin.