Maytag Presents: The Story of Clothes Drying - 16mm Film

[cadman]

This week's film is from Maytag, pushing the advantages of *fully-automatic* clothes drying with their new Halo of Heat model with electronic sensing. I believe that puts this film right around 1960. Run time is approximately 5 minutes.

 

[qsd-dan]

First Electronic Controlled Dryer on the Planet

Thanks Cory!

Anybody catch the flawed image/design in the clip?

 

[Unimatic1140]

Love the 1960 General Electric Filter-Flo washer at the Maytag test lab!

 

[gelaundry4ever]

filter-flo

I miss the filter-flo.

 

[tomturbomatic]

What's the dryer shown at 2:51? I can tell it belongs to a dryer without a door handle, but no more.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

Thank you for this video, Cory, and all the other videos you have been putting out...

Yes the handless dryer door, must be that visual-error, I know I'd spotted...

Like I said, a dryer had to be pretty-well designed to be well-made and ever-lasting to convince many to buy one, and pay off, which Maytag was the many who did...

-- Dave

 

[combo52]

Thanks, Cory another fun vintage film

I haven’t seen it, but supposedly Hamilton had an electronically controlled dryer by 1960 so I’m not sure who had one first.

Whirlpool didn’t release one until 1965 under the lady Kenmore name which was tremendously successful. I remember when working for Maytag in the mid 70s how much trouble they had getting halo of heat dryers to shut off properly. Meanwhile they were thousands of Kenmore dryers around with the electronic sensor that we never saw a problem with any of them.

Hi Tom, I noticed that too at 2 1/2 minutes there’s a dryer. They’re pulling clothing out of that appears to be a Frigidaire, interesting.

John L

 

[gansky1]

 

What a great leap forward in automation for the clothes dryer, the magic of electronics had made it to the laundry room.  I only remember a few people having the Maytag or WP/KM electronic sensor dryers, it was still a step-up feature for many.

 

[rinso]

In 1962, my parents bought a Maytag laundry pair. The dryer was one of the first HOH machines with an electronic dry control. It had the HOH tiny drum with the lint filter mounted on the back of the drum. I did indeed dry perfectly, even if the items were mixed, but it was painfully slow with drying items like towels and jeans. Mom would often split a full wash load into two dryer loads, due to the small drum. In 16 years of very heavy use with a family of 7, it never needed any repair.

 

[tomturbomatic]

In looking more closely at that black door gasket, I am wondering if it could be a TOL GE from before the redesign in 1957. I see the door latch on the side, but don't know if it is released by a foot pedal or a button on the side.

 

[maytag85]

The trick to getting a Maytag HOH to dry faster is to have as short of a duct run as much as possible, second it up upgrade to a 160F/170F/180F thermostat for the high limit. I put a 180F for the high limit thermostat in my Maytag Franken dryer awhile back for experimentation purposes, literally would dry a large load of towels in a good 40 to 45 minutes time since the heat would stay on until the cycling thermostat was satisfied.

 

[appnut]

2:51

John, I agree that dryer is most likely a Frigidare. I cannot remember if Frigidaire ever offered a model with the open dryer door with the foot step on pedal. I remember GE having that.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Frigidaire mounted their gaskets to the door, not the door opening on the machine itself because in the Filtrators the cabinet would be too hot. Frigidaire TOL dryers had foot pedal door opening from 1957 on into the 1960s.