Sears Fall/Winter 1940 Catalog

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

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launderess

launderess

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It's interesting that the top of the line products were Four Star. In 1957 the washer under the Lady Kenmore was the Four Star Cycla Fabric. This was interesting and sad to read. You could tell that the economy was not all that great. Lots of people did not have electricity. People outside of cities did not have gas service. I wonder how the canaries fared in homes with coal and kerosene heat sources. And we know now what was coming in the next year.
 
Notice the washers can be had for 25 cycle, 50 cycle, and 60 cycle current as well as 32 volts DC. Southern California Edison was 50 cycle territory until the late Forties! I think 25 cycles were used on some of the early hydroelectric installations at Niagara Falls.

My grandfather had a DC electric installation made by Delco, using a gasoline motor that charged a battery or batteries. 32 volts sounds about right. It wasn't needed after they got TVA power in 1939.

Thanks Launderess, this will be fun to peruse.
 
"You could tell that the economy was not all that great."

Great Depression stubbornly hung on until 1941 when ramp up spending for WWII finally killed it. Notice nearly everything in that catalog could be had for "X" amount down and "Y" per month easy credit plans.

All through catalog Sears makes repeated and ample use of highlighting their "lower prices"
 
Interesting catalog. I wasn't aware that 1900 Corporation (predecessor of Whirlpool) had ever made a gasoline powered washer. I noticed the electric ranges were shipped from the Newark Stove Co. factory in Newark, OH, which was owned by Sears and the Florence Range Co. Gas ranges shipped from the Bradley, IL factory of Florence Range, which later became Roper.

My grandparents house in Mississippi didn't get electricity until around 1948. They lived about five miles out of town on a back road. My mom graduated HS in 1939, and said the school and most of the houses in town had electricity and running water. My grandfather didn't get a telephone until the mid 1960's, though service had been available for decades by then. Though the house had a well with electric pump, he only had running water (cold) to the kitchen sink. He finally got an indoor bathroom and water heater around 1966 when my mom and Aunt Doris paid for it to be installed.

The Sears catalog at that time was, of course, geared mainly to rural dwellers, so reflects items they would be likely to buy. Well to do city people had many other options, so probably didn't buy much from the catalog.
 
A couple of surprises:

Oil fueled water heater. I guess it makes sense if ones house was piped for an oil burning furnace. Also kerosene water heaters. Was it common to have a large above or inground kerosene tank back then?

Whole house water softeners were available in 1940. Wasn't expecting that!

Always wondered who sold Water Witch wringers. It was Sears!
 
Until I was two years old, we lived in a house that had an oil-fired water heater. The house was built in 1903, and had a forced air heating system that also used oil. I think that heating system had been installed sometime in the 1930's, as I think the original was a boiler with steam radiators, which had likely used coal.

When we moved to the house where I currently reside, it had an oil-fired boiler for hot water heat using convectors. It contained a separate coil for domestic hot water. My parents didn't like that setup, as the boiler had to operate all year, so they bought an electric water heater. I don't know about kerosene, but our oil tank was in the basement near the boiler. A couple neighbors who used oil had tanks outside, and my dad's uncle's house had a large underground tank.
 
Re:#6

When my family moved to the Northern California coast in 1964 I attended the eighth grade at Fort Ross Elementary School, a little three room school house that was heated by big kerosene heaters in each of the classrooms. There was a huge kerosene tank outside that was regularly filled to supply those three heaters. And at that time there were also some homes on the ridge that still used kerosene to supplement the heat from their fireplaces and they also had above ground kerosene tanks.

Eddie
 
In this area nearly all homes, including the one I grew up in had a left side heater that ran on kerosene with a right side regular gas or electric stove in their kitchen. Some of those side heaters had a coil that heated a seperate hot water tank that was no good to use in the summer. We had a Sears Homart kerosene water heater and a Homart hot air furnace that was converted to regular fuel oil that looked like an octopus with all the pipes, much like those in the catalog. Alot of renters had another kerosene room heater away from their kitchen heater that heated the rest of their apartment. They still froze and had to pay for their own kerosene. Houses really stunk bad in the middle of the winter with that kerosene burning. Kerosene was mostly stored in inside or outside tanks and most units had a fuel pump to the heater, otherwise you would have to keep filling a 5 gallon tank beside the heater that would be piped to the unit. Glad those days are over.
 
"Whole house water softeners were available in 1940."

Systems for softening water have been around since days of antiquity. Modern systems as we know them today began sometime in middle of 1800's. Mr. Emmett J. Culligan was responsible for designing and bringing water softening systems for home use.

https://hydroflow-usa.com/blog/residential-blogs/water-softening-systems/

https://www.culligan.com/culligan-about-us/history

https://horatioalger.org/members/detail/emmett-j-culligan/

https://uswatersystems.com/blogs/bl...S_8C5idMKbMBDYnz9gS8WiBxhWI7OS9lfOCkyCT1y6Tby

It wouldn't be until sometime in 1930's or so world saw first man made surfactants that became "light duty" detergents, shampoos, etc.. Even then pretty much soap was still queen of wash day and for other cleaning. Since hard water and soap aren't best combination you can see where that was going.
 
Kerosene and other distillations of petrol have been around since about middle or so 1800's. It wasn't until electricity, invention of small fans (and motors to run them) came about in early 1900's that oil, petrol, kerosene etc...burners became possible. From then on it was a rush to move away from coal...

Hard to imagine today but coal back then cost more than any sort of petrol and often was subject to all sorts of issues with supply including frequent labor actions affecting mines.

Soon everywhere you looked things were switching from coal to oil/petrol or electricity. Steam powered ships and locomotives for example went over to oil or diesel. For building heating everyone and their mother was soon churning out various burners for oil or other sorts of petrol and there was a lively business in converting boilers and furnaces off coal. Many buildings including homes still have their original boilers that once burned coal that were converted to oil (then to or perhaps outright to natural gas) and still running today.

Natural gas of course wasn't (and still isn't) everywhere, but oil, kerosene and diesel fuels can be stored in tanks or whatever, so there you are.

Beauty of these newer petrol heating systems is ability they offered of modern "automatic" control of heating. This without having to deal with bother that goes with firing coal boilers, furnaces, stoves, ranges... No ashes to empty and dispose of. No worries about fire going out. Waking up to warm home/building instead of having to go down to basement and unbank/fire up coal boiler/furnace.

Big Coal didn't take any of these developments lying down. By 1930's and certainly post WWII there were automatic stokers and other systems that rivaled (so their makers claimed) oil or petrol heat. Companies such as Iron Fireman branded all sorts of stoker feed systems for those who still burned coal.

archive.org

Audels House Heating Guide Including Ventilating and Air Conditioning : The Theo. Audel & Co., Publishers : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

1016p ; ill.; 17 cm; trade catalog;
archive.org
 
Launderess, the kerosene refrigerator worked on the adsorption refrigeration principle like the Servel gas refrigerators. The refrigeration system was complicated, but as Servel advertised, it had no moving parts. In Mary Martin's book, My Heart Belongs, she includes a chapter about her life in Brazil where she and her husband had a Servel Kerosene refrigerator. Occasionally, it would get an air bubble in the system and stop cooling. It had to be turned upside down and "burped" after which it worked fine again
 
My aunt's house built in the early 50's had oil heat till we swapped out the furnace in the early 70's.  It was a nasty thing, everything in the house had a yellow coating from the oil. The house was in the city and there was gas available at some point so I have no idea why oil was used.
 
"he house was in the city and there was gas available at some point so I have no idea why oil was used"

There was then and still today a feeling by some that gas would make "your house blow up". Thus certain persons wanted nothing to do with natural gas for heating, hot water, cooking...

Suppose back in days of gas lighting and or appliances with standing pilot lights (that went out) or whatever fault caused a home or area to fill with gas, then someone lit a match or there was a spark and *KaBoom*

Prolly was a good thing homes were drafty back then. Cannot imagine damage to health from being sealed up all winter in a place with any of these wood, oil, kerosene, or even coal heating, cooking, hot water....
 
Water heating used to be much harder, as most people didn't have the automatic water heaters we have today. In the house my mom grew up in, there was a coil on the central coal furnace, which was common with central oil or coal furnaces, but many people didn't have any kind of central heating. They might have used a range boiler (I think was the term) on their coal or wood cookstoves, or a "bucket-a-day" water heater.

If you think oil heat was dirty, just try living in a city where everyone is burning soft coal.
 

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