“Sadly for everyone else as with their front loading washing machines Bendix had a lock on various patients. Anyone who else with ideas in that direction (such as a plain front loading washer) had to either work around Bendix’s patents or pay up”.
That’s one of the many reasons why front loaders never caught on in the 50’s and 60’s era. Not only the patents were the issue, but the lethargically slow spin speeds and ergonomics in how things were laid out, among many other factors. Companies just went to top loading designs since it wasn’t a patent or idea by a single entity or company, could have a different internal design and control panel without having a royalty to anyone, or fight in court.
Another thing too is if you were one of those to have one of the earliest automatics Bendix made in the late 1930’s, early early 1940’s, then were to trade in for a Frigidaire Unimatic or a Whirlpool in the early 1950’s, would have been more than delighted with the spin speeds and rinsing performance (slow by today’s standards, but was light years ahead around that time). Many of those people who essentially were Guinea pigs in the very early days of automatic washers then upgraded in the 1950’s were more than happy with the flexibility, washing and rinsing performance, spin speeds and probably thought something along the lines of “Why look back on when you had to bolt the machine down, items that essentially were dripping wet, things not laid out ergonomically, this is the future from here on out”.
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