Vintage "Condensed" Controlled Sudsing All Detergent

[launderess]

And Another Thing

Monsanto had shopped around their patents for low sudsing detergent to the Big Three at the time, but each flatly turned down the offer. Monsanto finally gave up and launched their own detergent (Sterox or something like that).

Monsanto had worked on developing a low sudsing detergent because front loading washing machines required such a product. Indeed Westinghouse was linked with Lever Brother's "All" detergent for that reason. Boxes of the controlled sudsing stuff came with Westinghouse front loaders.

P&G of course launched "Dash", but as the front loading market was rather small, the product ever really held huge market share.

 

[maytagbear]

We used dishwasher all

sometimes. It was when Ma was feeling pressed for cash. She preferred Cascade, and I preferred Calgonite, but at least in our water, dishwasher all was a solid performer.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[supersuds]

Moutains of suds?

I think it was "oceans of suds," which fits in with the name Tide.

Interesting article "How Tide Cleaned Up the Competition:"

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hbswk.hbs.edu

 

[launderess]

Gosh My Spelling Is Bad

Oceans not "mountains" it tis.

L.

 

[angus]

Actually Bendix did the same thing as Westinghouse. Back in the days when large advertisements were painted on the sides of buildings, I remember one for All near our apartment building. It pictured a Bendix front loader and claimed that "Bendix recommends All".

Lever's problem was that they were not US based and didn't pump the money into saturating advertising that P&G did. And Colgate was more of a personal care products company. Also, P&G played a very mean game of hardball with retailers and in effect muscled out any competition. Both Lever and Colgate laundry products were actually quite good. Rinso Blue, Sunshine Rinso and Rinso with Color Bleach, Surf, Drive, All, Fab, Ajax and Punch were all solid performers. And Lever had tremendous opportunity with introducing the first liquid detergent, Wisk. But the P&G behemoth was just too much.I don't count products like Silver Dust and Breeze - those "premiums" were actually quite costly considering the quality of the premium, the actual quantity of detergent you paid for and the usage directions for those two products. Both called for starting with at least 1 1/2 cups for an average load.

 

[jamiel]

Going to have to get that book...it also helps with a family legend...my grandparents lived in suburban Cincinnati in 1945-1948 and my grandmother always told of doing some in-home tests of the (then) new laundry detergents earlier---pre-war...my grandfather was a chemist who worked in phosphates...my grandmother related a funny story about having a dinner party and using detergent to wash dishes and the ladies were all so impressed. Apparently though the products weren't fully baked, because my grandmother also said that they smelled awful...like a public toilet, she said (that's the kind of thing they would perfect in the in-home testing)

 

[dirtybuck]

Intro of Tide In England..

Where Tide was touted for "Oceans of Suds" in the US, over there it was "Oceans of Lather".

 

[sudsmaster]

Chlorine and Oxygen Bleach mixing

It's well known that liquid chlorine bleach should never be mixed with an acid or with ammonia, as toxic chlorine gas and other toxic and/or dangerous reaction compounds are produced.

However I cannot find anything in an fairly extensive search about the reaction between an oxygen bleach - such as sodium perborate and chlorine bleach, either in terms of toxic reaction products or about them inactivating each other.

That said, chlorine bleach is much quicker and more aggressive than oxygen bleach. So if there was any inactivation going on, the oxygen bleach would be the moiety to be inactivated.

In any case, it's probably that many consumers have added chlorine bleach to their wash water that already contains an oxygen bleach, without mishap.

Chlorine bleach will, of course, destroy laundry enzymes and for that reason it should be added at the end of the wash cycle or start of the rinse cycle, so as to give the enzymes a chance to do their job.

If anyone has a link to scientific literature that discusses how an oxygen bleach and chlorine bleach might interact, I'd liek to see it.

 

[launderess]

I've Posted This Information Before

Regarding the chemical reaction between chlorine and oxygen type bleaches, shan't do it again. Check the archives.

The reaction is common and good enough that dry cleaners and commercial laundries can and do use hydrogen peroxide/oxygen bleaches to counteract chlorine bleach.

Many colour safe detergents contain small amounts of oxygen bleaches to counteract the chlorine found in most tap water. Indeed one of the benefits of using oxygen bleaches when laundering colours is that they protect colours from repeated effects of chlorine found in tap water.

Suppose if one the ration of chlorine bleach to oxgyen or vice versa was huge the neutralising effect would be minimal, but the reaction would still occur.

L.

 

[supersuds]

Aha

I wondered what those "color protection agents" were.

 

[launderess]

Colour Protection Agents

Pipe:

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www.borax.com

 

[sudsmaster]

Laundress,

I'd check the archives but this forum is not archived...

 

[sudsmaster]

In Lieu Of...

In lieu of archives of this forum, and as I recall no links were ever posted to support the information anyway, I got a clue from Laundress and did another Google search on "neutralizing chlorine bleach". I found a web site about dyeing that discussed the various ways to neutralize chlorine bleach in detail. One of them is hydrogen peroxide, and as we have all learned here, the mechanism of oxygen bleaches such as sodium perborate is to produce hydrogen peroxide (although the borate portion also has non-oxygen bleaching activity on its own).

The other two methods, which may be more economical, involve using "antichlor" (sodium bisulfite or metabisulfite), or "bleach-stop" (sodium thiosulfate). As I recall, thiosulfate is also called "hypo" in old film photo labs, and is used to stop the developing of film. I use it in diluted measure to neutralize the chlorine in tap water that I use to make up water lost to evaporation in my koi pond.

Here's the link:

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www.pburch.net