POD 2/14/12 (another math equation) BENDIX GYROMATIC

[tomturbomatic]

Note at the bottom of the add that it now reads Bendix Automatic Washer, not Automatic Home Laundry. They finally had to bow to the popular terminology: a machine that washed the clothes was a washer, not a home laundry. I wonder if it had anything to do with Bendix having a dryer also. A home laundry was not complete without a dryer so the washer part of the pair could no longer be called the home laundry.

If they had not already used the highfalutin (yes, it's one word; I looked it up.) term automatic home laundry, they could have applied it to the Duomatic, which was indeed a home laundry, but that train had already left the station.

 

[jetcone]

Yes Tom

and I just learned from an edition of Laundry Age dated April 1,1932 that this was the age of large commercial laundries that did all the home washing in America, and it was under direct attack from washing machine manufacturer's. So Bendix was going straight to the heart of the matter in calling their machine a "home laundry" so you never had to send out your laundry again.

 

I will scan and post this new piece of laundry history it directly affects the start of home automatic washing machines-which we love soo much! Who knew at one time every town in America had a central laundry that did all the washing for entire neighborhoods?

 

Central laundries must have been an urban thing don't cha think? On the farm wringers would have been standard, farmer's wives wouldn't have sent out their laundry weekly I don't think.

 

[combo52]

Urban central laundries

Were probably the reason for the rampant spread of polio in the 30s and 40s, which was not wiped out until everyone had automatic washers and dryers with polio killing Ozone lamps in them in the 1950s.  LOL.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Commercial laundry memories pt. 1

I don't know that the large laundries did everyone's laundry. Maybe the wealthier homes used this service. I do remember, even in the 50s, that in Decatur, GA, Morgan laundry and cleaners had trucks that traversed the city and suburbs picking up laundry and dry cleaning for their large central plant. Then they built a smaller operation in our shopping center with the a laundry on one side and the large equipment on the other. At first, the laundry side was attended and they used Bendix machines with the little lever that you pushed to the side with the controls under the cover at the top front. So they were doing customer's laundry there. When we would drop off daddy's suits and shirts, I would venture over there but the stern-looking black women did not want me in there (crazy white boy). They had a small white extractor to spin stuff before putting them in the dryers. The extractor sat out behind the place for a long time. I was fasacinated because it had a pedal that I guessed was the tub brake and I wanted it badly. Then this side was converted to a coin-op laundry with 58 FL Philcos with the yellow knobs for water temp selection for both wash and rinse/soak. Daddy and I used to take our throw rugs there and, the first time, we over-sudsed a machine so badly that when it went into the spin after wash, it puked suds through the soap trap. The little door on top was blown open and suds flowed down the front of the washer. Then the washers were changed to Highlanders. Those were just damn boring. The funny thing about them was the weak stabilizer springs that would allow the machine to wash with the tub leaning far over in one direction. We stopped going there and went to a place with SQs because there was a coupon in the paper when it opened that gave you a couple of 25 cent washes and maybe 30 minutes of drying (10 cents for 10 minutes) free. The washers were neat and held more than the Maytags. I soon learned how to defeat the lid lock. Then I found a place with Frigidaires! Wow with windows in the lids, too! We even went to a Kelvinator-equipped coin laundry. Those had windows in the lids also. Then a huge place opened with Frigidaires and Frigidaire dry cleaners so we went there. I could even take stuff up on my bike so I did not have to involve daddy anymore. Unfortunately, they switched out the three ring pump agitators for the space capsule things which took up so much room it was hard to wash throw rugs. By the mid 60s, I was wanting a FL at home and Morgan's had installed big stainless steel 20# FLs so we started going back there. The machines had a soak, wash and three rinses with good spins in between and reverse tumble washing. My parents allowed as how they washed better than anything since the old Frigidaires. I used the performance to help sell my parents on a Westinghouse.

 

[tomturbomatic]

commercial laundries, pt. 2

The father of a guy in my scout troop owned another big laundry and cleaners with a fleet of trucks. We went there on a field trip one night during a scout meeting. Mr. Childers told us about boilers, the pride and joy of every laundry man. The place was not processing anything, but he flipped on the boiler and in less than a minute he pointed out the sound of steam pinging in the pipes. He showed us three huge exhaust fans and said that even on the coldest day of the winter of 1963 when the temperature in Atlanta dropped to 3 below zero, they still had one of those fans operating. It gave me a good idea of the particular hell the place could be in the summer's heat and humidity.

In addition to the commercial laundries with trucks, there were smaller neighborhood places with a row of Bendix machines opposite a row of dryers where you could drop off laundry for wash and fold service. There was a strip shopping center between Decatur & Avondale with a Big Apple grocery store where we shopped in the mid 50s for a time and a few doors down was the Twin Oaks Automatic Laundry. The shopping center had some gorgeous Art Deco decoration above the stores and I could usually get shed of the folks long enough to run down and watch the machines turning, so full that there was no tumbling visible through the glass, and there were two rows of washers in sort of stadium seating with the rear row being higher than the front row. There was a big sign behind the counter about them not washing foam padded bras because they were a fire hazard in the dryers. Again it was attended and I could not venture too far inside. When the laundry was done, it was wrapped up in big sheets of brown paper with the customer's name on the end of the bundle and put on big shelves.

Some people had a washer-woman come to the house and either pick up the laundry and return it or she would do it there. Some of mom's friends never had a washing machine and always sent their laundry out. Some stopped having the washer woman when they replaced the wringer with an automatic.

Commercial laundries were a huge industry. There were steam laundries and power laundries and hand laundries, all of them having their day and giving way to the next newest thing in the march of time. I will have to check my set of Britannicas for the article on Laundry and Laundering. I saved the WXYZ volume of our World Book because it had an article about Washing Machines and concluded with the statement that some washers now dry the load, too. WOOHOO! Combos!

 

[jetcone]

Kerrslappp to Combo52!

You'll be ozoned for sure!

 

 

 

[launderess]

Laundry Being Sent Out

Was common in many urban and surburban areas of not only America but the UK and parts of Europe as well. So yes, the Bendix "Home Laundry" was a frontal assault on the big steam/commercial laundries turff.

Even as far back as the Victorian/Edwardian age there were large commercial (steam) laundries that did the washing for not only hotels, hospitals,and other commercial establishments but domestic wash as well.

These businesses made much of the fact that their equipment could (and often did) a better job of washing and ironing laundry than Madame or her laundress could do at home. Pure softened water, special soaps and or detergents, properly made up and applied starches, large mangles for ironing linen without creases and so forth often gave far better results than at home. Often at less price per pound than it costs for a laundress to come in to the home, or take it away to her place.

Because these modern "steam" laundries could process vast volumes of laundry quickly households and establishments no longer had to lie in huge stores of linen. Items sent out on Monday for instance were expected to be back on Thursday or sooner.

Quite honestly ever since the practice began laundry is the first household chore any housewife sought to get out of, and since these were the days of soaking, boiling, beating, scrubbing, mangling, line drying, starching, drying agian, ironing, airing then folding you can see how happy *anyone* would be to get shot of the task as well as the smells/excess moisture and heat.

Being as all this may even by the 1900's housewives began to worry about disease being spread via communal laundries (in most all commercial laundries orders are mixed together in large washers). You didn't know what common diseases lurked in other households (dipthera, typhoid, scarlett fever, measels, etc) or for that matter laundry workers were suffering from. Laundry coming out of a boil wash with very alkaline chemicals,then ironed with a hot iron probably was "sterile" enough for most purposes; but that did no good if the person folding your wash was infected with an illness and coughing up a storm over your stuff.

So housewives began (if ever so reluctantly) to start doing their wash at home. Happily semi automatic and later automatic washing machines started appearing. Most cost quite allot of money which limited their reach, but even the crudest devices liberated one from some of the wash day havoc. Ironers and later electric hand irons also did much to ease the burden.

Still right up until the 1940's was common for many households to send out wash. WWII changed that as men and women were needed elsewhere, and funds became tight for many homes. The post war "boom" that followed saw an explosion of home appliances including those for laundry. What soon followed was a deliberate advertising blitz to get Madame back into the laundry-room where she has stayed ever since.

It should be noted that the fear of disease was one of the reasons behind local laws regarding commercial laundries. This includes the requirement for a licence and the almost universal ban on "taking laundry in" as it were.