In the early 50s
When clothes dryers were of many designs, there were some where the drying system drew the air through the tumbling laundry instead of blowing it through like SNorges and their concept of drying was called "vacuum drying" because, they claimed, that the lower air pressure in the tumbler made water evaporate faster. No one was ever able to prove that the little fan lowered the air pressure that much or how much and if it would have a measurable difference on the drying ability when matched against other dryers. I am thinking of the early 20th Century arguments against indoor installation of clothes dryers because they would create such vacuums that houses would be damaged, doors would not stay closed and windows would crack or fall in. None of those things happened because houses were not built that air tight to begin with. I have a book titled Looking For Candles In the Window, the story of the tragic Red River Valley Blizzard of March 15, 1941. There were winds howling at almost hurricane speed. Snow was blown into houses through the exterior walls and not through vents even in a place where keeping the outside weather out of the house was a priority, it was not a successful construction priority. The main thing that made the blizzard so tragic was the lack of good weather forecasting and a day that started out mild and a storm that blew in and caught everyone by surprise, similar to the Armistice Day Storm of 1940 which killed 154 humans, thousands of cattle in Iowa and more than a million turkeys in several states. In reading about these storms, I saw photographs of how the businesses in Minnesota prepared for winter by building snow sheds over the front of buildings. I wonder if any of our northernmost members have ever seen these structures. Anyway, after this storm, the NWS moved weather forecasting stations for Minnesota from Chicago to Minnesota so that was an improvement.
That was a lot of words about houses and wind. Even today's dryers which move about 150 cubic feet of air per minute do not endanger dwellings, although they can waste a lot of heated or cooled air.
