Mid Century Vis-Matic

[launderess]

Early Automatic Front Loaders

Such as the Bendix were't that great at extraction either, indeed probably not much if any improvement over wringers. One was still left with literally water laden laundry compared to later incarnations of washing machines and certainly against most of today's 1000rpms or above.

Hence early tumble dryers ran at temps that literally baked water out of washing. It was the only way to cope one assumes with laundry that was so poorly extracted.

 

[mixfinder]

Cool Beans

I love vintage articles of vintage machines. I often think of Grandma and all the inventions, innovations and products she witnessed. From no electricity or convenience to Gold Medallion electric homes, freeways and space travel. An automatic washer would have sounded space age in the 20's.

 

[golittlesport]

I think some of the early Consumer magazines posted on this site also compare water removal abilities of wringer washers to the spin drying of automatics. Even the 500 rpms of early Kenmores, Whirlpools and Westinghouses did a much better job of extraction than a wringer. But wringers are fun!

 

[e2l-arry]

Speaking of early Automatics,

A wringer still extracted more water than the Bendix Economat.

 

[garyl]

Drying

My friends lived in Palm Springs, California in a house that is at least as old as your Kenmore. The back yard had a HUGE clothes line, as did most of the houses in the subdivision. The idea was to wash all of the clothes, then start hanging them. It is usualy hot and very dry there, and there is always a wind from one direction or another. They had a laundry cart, and would start hanging up the clothes at one end of the line. When they got to the other end, they would go back to where they started, and the clothes were dry!! Take them down and they were ready to put away or iron. The wind blew so hard that the clothes were not stiff like some clothes that are line dried. Same thing for the towles. They were fairly fluffy.