Q about Styling of 57 Frigidaire "Tower" Washer

[scoots]

I have always thought that the 1957 Frigidaire "Tower" washer/dryer was the most striking design offered, but it was incredibly short-lived.

Was there a practical problem with the controls, or was it so much "of the period" that styling tastes moved on quickly after being introduced?

Was it just for 57 or did it hang around a year or two?

(PS, image not taken from Picture of the Day)

 

[philr]

Tom just answered in another thread that some people were bothered because the machines had no control panel to prevent the clothes from falling behind.

http://www.automaticwasher.org/cgi-bin/TD/TD-VIEWTHREAD.cgi?66350_8~1

I never thought this was a problem with mine, I do leave a lot of clothes over my machines at times and it's still better than most of today's washers (or many of the early automatics from just a few years before) with their controls at the front. At least, the 1957s did have a tiny backsplash that stopped the clothes from sliding at the back too easily.

Washers, like cars usually changed their styles each year back then, and the 1957 Frigidaires were no exception. The 1958 models went with a full width fluorsecent-lit control panel which also looked very good but the 1957s are certainly unique. Here's a close-up view of the controls on my Canadian 1957 Imperial set.

 

[jetcone]

I had a conversation With

One of the men involved with designing that machine.
At Frigidaire they always felt it was their best designed machine

But there was a recession on and sales were bad so the directors decided to kill the design and go with something more conventional and that was the 1958 style

The designers were very disappointed but they had no choice but to follow in line that's why it was only made one year
His name slips my mind right now but I do have it upstairs in the records
He worked with Kendall Clark and Byron L Brucken
He designed the clock mechanisms for the washers
Oh well it'll come to me nice man to correspond with - look up some timer mechanism patents for General Motors Frigidaire you'll find his name '

 

[vacerator]

Weren't they called

"monitor tops"?
I doubt the 1958 recession had much to do with the styling change. Styling is done years ahead, and that recession was mild especially compared to the one in the 80's, or last decade.
It always costs a company more money to change a design wether sales are good or not.
It used to be more about improving the product.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Monitor tops were GE refrigerators from the 1920s. The guy with the old wringer washer collection out west called one he found a "tower top," but Control Tower was Frigidaire's term for them.

 

As for the economy, all I remember from 57-58 was the start of the space race with Sputnik and greater emphasis on science in schools and tail fins on cars. That would have seemed to boost the economy. Eventually, the Space Program gave us Corning Ware.

 

I know one family in 1962 with the Special WD-57 with the Unimatic mechanism. Something was wrong with the timer escapement and after the spin following the wash, the timer moved backwards during the rinse and final spin so it ended up where it was started, but to start a new load, you had to turn the pointer one revolution  all the way around to the wash time you wanted before starting the machine.

 

[philr]

I recently had a problem with the timer of my WIC-57 and it was stuck in overflow rinse for about an hour. Talk about a deep rinse which was supposed to be warm but ended being cold as the alternating fill valve got stuck on hot when the water from the water heater became too cold to trip it!

The timer wouldn't move, even manually, because of the stuck escapement. I was able to modify a late 1960s timer escapement to fit the 1957 timer and it works as new now. The timer is also much quieter than it was.

 

[mixguy]

Unimatic vs Multimatic mechanisms

1957, this the last year of the unimatic mechanism and the first year of the multimatic mechanism? TOL Unimatic and one step down multimatic?

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

Cool design, and so were radio dial Kenmores, another short-lived pattern, until Sears who never used the same design twice, turned to making a same one almost-eternally...

 

 

-- Dave

 

[swestoyz]

Unimatic/Pulsamatic/Multimatic

Mixguy - you're close. The Unimatic transmission was offered in the domestic/home washer line through the 1958 model year run, starting in 1947.  The Pulsamatic was GM's first attempt at cost savings by testing a belt driven transmission assembly in the ecomony models, starting in 1955 through the 1958 model year. 

 

GM advanced the Pulsamatic design to include a two speed motor/clutch design starting across the whole board in the 1959 Multimatic transmission for all domestic/home models, leaving the single speed Unimatic for commercial application only up through the early 60's.  The Pulsamatic also differed from the Multimatic as the Multimatic matched the Unimatic wash pulsing rate of 330 BPM, vs. the 660 BPM in the Pulsamatic. 

 

During the late 50's and early 60's GM was already experimenting with the Rollermatic transmission, which was rolled out in 1964 and completely replaced the Multimatic transmission across all domestic/home models in 1965.

 

Ben

 

[cornutt]

I don't know if this influenced the Fridigaire designers or not, but 1957 was the year that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway opened the structure that was called the Control Tower. It replaced an older structure that was built in the shape of a Japanese pagoda.