The pair in the POD are far more deluxe than the dryer I picked up last week, but I doubt that the dryer in the picture, for all of its buttons had more than two heat input levels with one operating thermostat and probably no auto-dry cycle; that was a couple of years in the future for Norge dryers, although they did make a type of "Soft-Heat" auto-dry for a Wards Her Majesty gas dryer we have. It ran along at full tilt and at the higher BTU input until the first operating thermostat was satisfied, then cut the burner to the low input and, when the second thermostat was satisfied, the heat turned off and the cycle went through cool down and shut off.
Jon, actually Spandex should not be dried with heat. Why would you think someone would use the no tumble feature for it? I guess it's lucky that this dryer came out when people still approached doing laundry with a bit of knowledge. Even if the Spandex were dried on low heat and no tumble without the rack, the heat input was low enough that, with the gale force wind that blew through the machine, the Spandex should not be in danger of burning. You notice that this dryer had the Stop 'N DRY handle at the top of the drum opening. Above that is the embossed aluminum piece was the reflector for the drum light. My cheaper dryer has a short "T" shaped knob behind the flop down lint door at the base that is turned all the way one way to let the drum tumble and the opposite way to stop tumbling.
I don't know if we have mentioned here that these early Norge dryers had the heat source run the width of the drum. The gas burner or electric element ran across the back of the machine with a slot in front of it where the heat was sucked into the fan and blown through the 3 ducts in the back of the drum. It was for even heat input as opposed to heating elements positioned like in a Filtrator. At first the drilled port cast iron burner had the holes on top so you could see the little flames on top of the burner bend toward the fan. Then they changed the burner so that the holes faced down to help eliminate the problem of lint clogging the holes. Finally, in this style dryer, they went to a gun-type burner like on other gas dryers. It pointed down slightly instead of firing straight across.
