POD 7/21/2017

[brucelucenta]

This was probably toward the end of the 50's since the new Philco washer design was not around yet. I have only seen one of these machines in the field of appliances where I used to pick up units to work on. It did look exactly like the one pictured. It had an aluminum agitator and the drum was somewhat narrow and skinny like a Hotpoint machine. In the next year or two after this advertisement, Philco introduced the new machines with the flipper at the bottom that was a whole different mechanism and way of washing clothes. For what it's worth, Consumer reports actually gave a very good rating to those machines when they were introduced. They listed just after Norge.

 

[frigilux]

Consoles like the one on this Philco strike me as having the last vestiges of art deco-era design about them. Lovely.

Aside: Always liked rugs like the one shown going into the machine. We had a couple of them in the house back in the early 1960s.

 

[turquoisedude]

Interesting that Blackstone also used a 'suspension' system with central ball (they called it 'gyroscopic' IIRC).  It seemed like a good system... wonder why it went away?  

 

[gyrafoam]

I'm told mine is a 1956

Re-Badged Dexter machine.

Nearly identical to the Philco. It has a cool bifurcated fill nozzle that shoots the water in two different directions. Makes for a great spray-rinse. The spin starts off very slowly and smooth, gradually getting up to speed. So hard to unbalance machine even with a partial load.

Agitator looks similar to a SQ however, the fins are not as tall so it is not as aggressive. Machine is whisper-quiet in operation.

 

[jimmler]

POD Drift

Sometimes you can learn a lot more about the past than just appliances. I Google'd Claire McCardell and was "fashion-ated" by all her accomplishments. Her entry in Wikipedia shows a 1948 Kaiser-Frazer advertisement featuring a fairly provocative outfit for that time period. If I had a time machine, I think post-war US would've been an interesting time to visit.

 

[revvinkevin]

 

 

This looks more like mid-50's to me.  Later 50's exterior / control panel designs had a much more "modern" look to them.

 

[Unimatic1140]

Yes Today's POD is from 1956. Three years before the redesigned quintessential flapping agitation system was used on Philco washers. Bendix had patented and started marketing the flapping agitator in their Power-Surge top-loaders by 1955. This was the basic design that was updated and improved to create the 1959 Philco high-frequency washer design.

 

[ken]

1948 Kaiser-Frazer ad

with Claire McCardell beachwear design.