Hotpoint Combos

[launderess]

Wondering

Could Hotpoint, or any other appliance maker "force" people to part with an appliance if they did not wish?

Can understand the heavy pressure about no longer offering repair service and or spare parts/warranty service, but other than that what sort of pull does any appliance maker have? After all one purchased the appliance and therefore owns it outright, it is the buyer's sole and exclusive property.

If I had owned a Hotpoint or Maytag combination and either company came a knocking, I would have listened very politely then asked them to leave my house, not to come back or bother contacting me again. After all this is the United States of America where posession is 9/10's of the law.

L.

 

[westytoploader]

Interesting information; didn't realize Hotpoint even made a combination machine!!! Not a bad spin either...I agree with Tom that the patent infringement involved with the shock absorbers probably led to its demise. The mechanics don't really look like much of a fire hazard, IMHO.

I know the SQ Combos, while quite rare, are in existence, but are there any remaining Hotpoint combos out there or have they suffered from the same fate as some concept cars?

 

[launderess]

Short History of Hotpoint

Brand began around the 1900's by a California power company employee who also in his spare time was inventing small electrical appliances. While doing his monthly meter readings, the man would try to get housewives to try electric irons instead of the coal/gas heated sad irons they currently used. The housewives flatly refused to have anything to do with the heavy and cumbersome electric irons of the time, and that sent the man back to tinkering.

Earl Richardson, had been tinkering with an electric iron for many years, but his purpose was not only to ease housewive's burdens. If housewives in numbers could be convinenced to switch to electric irons, demand for electric power would also increase, leading to more earnings for the power company.

Finally Mr. Richardson had enough prototypes of a new lighter electrical iron to test with local housewives. As an added incentive, Mr. Richardson got the power company to produce electrical power the entire day for one Tuesday (traditional day women did their ironing), the iron was an initial sucess. However after a few weeks housewives began to complain that the iron was too hot in the center and the element burnt out. Going back to his drawing board, Mr. Richardson sought advice from his wife, who suggested he make an iron that heated all the way up to the points so women could irons around buttons and do ruffles. After more experiments, Mr.Richardson soon invented the first long sealed element (Calrod), and the irons were a hit. Women began asking for the irons that were "hot around the point". Thus was the start of the Hotpoint brand. Mr. Richardson left the power company to form "Pacific Electric Heating Company", with four employees.

General Edison around this time had also made small appliances like toasters, but they didn't really sell well and "GE" stopped production. Meanwhile the Pacific Electrical Heating Company was producing toasters as well, first sold under the company name, then under the "HotPoint" brand name to capitalise on name value from their irons. By the late teens in 1900 "GE" purchased the Pacific Electric Heating Company , and Hotpoint ceased to be a separte company, but became a GE brand name. About this time GE also re-entered the small appliance market with things like toasters.

This pattern is common and when one thinks about it makes perfect sense. Electric power was a new thing, and after the trendy market was saturated, power companies needed more demand to increase profits, and what better way to increase said demand by making all and sundry types of appliances/object that run on electric power.

L.

 

[Brent-Aucoin]

Wow!
What a machine! So beautiful!
Robert or Greg N, you will find one soon.
Everytime that we talk about these rare machines, one pops up!
Thanks Robert for the wonderful ads on these!
What a machine!
Brent

 

[bajaespuma]

Those are two sexy freakin' black agitators.

 

[peteski50]

Hotpoint Combo

This looks like a real awsome combo. I had thought for the longest time that these combos were simular to the GE combos from that time. This actually seems like a nicer machine. Another good design that went out to pasture (sad). I assume this is a condensor drying system. I think they could have made the window bigger. It looks very much like the Maytag combo. Would be a nice find but my favorate is still the Bendix next to Sears. I would also like to learn more about the Easy combos. I remember them in the stores in the 60's when I was comming up.
Peter

 

[gansky1]

I thought the same thing about Bendix patents only being four years old when I saw those shock absorbers, Tom. A story of combos spontaneously bursting into flames would be awfully good incentive for the owners to wave goodbye and gratefully accept a TOL washer and dryer pair. Get that deathtrap out of my house and hurry!

I haven't found out any more about the demise of the Maytag or Westinghouse combos although it would make for good wash-in story telling. I wish we could find some of the factory/marketing communication somewhere. Keep combing ebay Laundress!

 

[JerseyMike]

That looks like a real awesome machine. Talk about an interesting design. I agree, that it was probably fear of a patent infringement lawsuit and not a fire that led to the demise of these machines.

Thanks for sharing.

Mike

 

[pturo]

Easy

Easy Washer was based in Syracuse, NY. They made a lot of private branded parts and machines as well as their "Easy" brand and took on production for big commerical washers for ocean liners, the military, and carpet& rug launderers in their later years. My aunt worked there in the 50's. They were bought out by some large company(Braun,I believe) but that company still makes the huge front load horizontal axis drums and machines for industry and military use. You can see the huge things in the factory lot coming and going on tractor trailers to Fort Drumm and NYC for commerical use. I guess Easy was better at function and manufacturing than they were at design and promotion.

 

[launderess]

You are probably not going to find "smoking guns" like that in someone's trash or estate, hence on fleabay,IMHO. More likely than not orders to "trash and offer replacement" were internal memo's and not circulated widely. Sad for our purposes people/companies were not as legal happy as they are today and took each other to court. A patent infringement suit or threat of one would be the best source for interesting tidbits.

Have a hunch not all Hotpoint combos were taken back and trashed. Somewhere, somehow GE must have missed one or two, question is where are they? When we least expect it, someone is going to either find one at an estate sale from some elderly person's home, or one will turn up in a basement of an old appliance store. Who knows, maybe even a GE employee who knew the real story, hung on to his/her unit.

The information regarding fate of all the Hotpoint combo's must have been buried in GE's corporation files, though by now they either are microfiched or possibly trashed/shreded. I'm thinking a record was kept of units produced versus units thrashed. In case of a threatened lawsuit,such information would have shown GE did indeed recall and destroy all the units.

L.

 

[tomturbomatic]

I don't know if anyone noticed, but in the first two pages of Robert's posting, the yellow background and then the control panel on the blue background, the capitalized words "Home Laundry" were used. Anyone who has looked at anything about the first Bendix washers knows that they were called the Automatic Home Laundry to distinguish them from wringer and spinner washing machines. The term did not catch on, but it was a trademark and it looks like somebody was really trying to give major attitude to Bendix/Philco Bendix. As for the suspension system, maybe Hotpoint figured that since AVCO (Aviation Company) held the patents and had sold off Bendix appliances, there would not be trouble. Or maybe they thought that they had worked out a deal with AVCO that fell through when AVCO sold Bendix. Bendix dealers had nothing good to say about how as soon as Philco got their hands on the Duomatic, they had to make it smaller. Something happened, but it shows how much harm Bendix did by tying up those patents on the suspended mechanism. And it's really unfair when you consider that Westinghouse had a suspension system in their automatic washer before Bendix did. The Hotpoint could have been the best combo next to the Bendix and could have helped save the reputation of combos, but then if Hotpoint could have continued with their design, others would have been able to also and combos could have been the future of laundry, just like the executives of Easy predicted. Easy was originally owned by the Murray Corporation and then by the Hupp Corporation.

Laundress: Many of the electric combos offered water heating and even a few gas models. Bendix offered the Magic Heater on the first Duomatic. It was automatic if you selected Hot wash water temperature. Only the first GE combo had a big button labeled Water Heater that when pushed heated the wash water. Maytag electric combos had a provision to heat the wash water. Don't know about the gas ones. Early RCA Whirlpool & Kenmore TOL models offered water heating in both gas and electric models; the electric by immersion elements in the sump and the gas by running the burner & blower with the air damper partly closed. I don't remember Easy offering water heating, nor Westinghouse, nor Norge. But any combo would make the wash fill hotter for a load that immediately followed a complete drying cycle because of the heat that remained in all of the heavy tubs, etc.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Demise of Westinghouse & Maytag combos

In the mid 60s, at the time Westinghouse redesigned the Space Mates and they had the recessed, side-swing door, there was a sales display that went next to them saying, among other things, that the two machines could wash and dry "12 pound loads" (nudge, nudge, wink)at the same time. The second load could be washing while the first one was drying. No waiting around until one machine finished washing and drying a load before starting the second load. Granted their combos were slow and prone to service problems, but this sounds like eating your own children. Westinghouse offered all of the service men at the Georgia Power Company a free Westinghouse combo if they would just keep it running and I was told by one of the service men that all of them turned it down.

I saw one of my friends in the major appliance department at our shopping center's Rich's selling a couple a GE combo one day. The next time I was in there, I asked him if they bought it. He started expostulating that they had bought it and already returned it and he would never sell another one. I asked him what was wrong. He said the complaint was that it took for ever to complete the cycle and that the lady said she could wring water out of the clothes after the spin. It was all true.

Maytag finally offered every combo owner a top of the line washer and dryer in exchange for the combo.

 

[peterh770]

I believe that when Easy was sold by Murray to Hupp is when they started rebadging Hotpoint machines as Easy. The Easy/Murray repair manual I have is very different from the Easy/Hupp reapir manual. When you compare the Easy/Hupp manual to the Hotpoint Repair Master, they are nearly identical.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Newer Hotpoint Combos

In the city of Columbia, MD, one of those planned communities, there is a high rise apartment house built on Lake Anne. It originally had Hotpoint electric kitchens with a rebadged GE undercounter combo so that everything could have the Hotpoint name. The combos are probably dead, and the building has probably gone condo. Columbia was a nice place for a while, then they had to let the poorer people live there and the crime rate soared. When they first planned it, they forgot to include crime, then they changed the plans to include crime, so now the planned town even has planned crime.

 

[mrcleanjeans]

HOTpoint was obviously a HOT POINT for Bendix

I would LOVE one of these,whatta beauty.I agree there was no
fire hazard except the dragons over at Philco-Bendix potentially breathing their threats.PITY.The Bendix combos were by far the best,my fave in fact,and yes,it seems like this Hotpoint wasn't too far behind,a close 2nd perhaps.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Jeff came by the house yesterday and I was telling him about the Hotpoint combo discussion. I looked it up in the 1960 version of the NARDA Blue Book for 1960. The Hotpoint LY1 was introduced in 1957 and sold for $530.