What On Earth

[launderess]

Is this?

Pardon Our Interruption...

 

[christfr]

cool

its a rocker. cool it just rocks back and forth. wonder if they were big sellers in their time? guess not

 

[tomturbomatic]

This was an early mechanized washing machine. A friend's family had one when she was a little girl called the 1910 Cataract. Cataract is another name for a waterfall--see Nile River. Anyway you notice that the tub has ribs like a washboard. Once the water and soap and clothes were loaded and the top put on, this tub would gently rock back and forth, tilting side to side, rubbing the clothes over the ribs and cleaning them as they sloshed in the water. It is sort of like a tumbler that does not make a full circle and instead of tub vanes to lift the clothes to tumble, they are moved by passing over the ribs which slow the movement of the items on the bottom and help create disturbances in what would otherwise be just side to side sloshing. When the washing was finished, the clothes went through the wringer into tubs for rinsing.

Hurley was an old name in industrial works. There was a Hurley Boilerworks. The Hurley Machine Co. was behind the first electrically operated washer produced in 1908, designed by Alva Fisher and marketed under the brand name Thor.

Sometime in the late 50s or early 60s, Westinghouse had an ad campaign that showed laundry running over small rapids in a strean and said that the tumbling action was like allowing the clothes to run a mile over the smooth river rocks in the stream bed. I guess this was based on the number of peripheral feet in the circumference of the drum, the number of peripheral feet the drum traveled per minute and then the total distance that would be in the minutes of a wash cycle. The ribs in the Hurley tub were designed to give a similar action. When Westinghouse went to the non-tilted tub, the tub wall had mini ribs between the 2 vanes, something even Bendix had not used or patented.

I wonder if the term "hurley" was ever used to describe a state of nausea as in, "I feel sorta hurley," or a state in which someone has been throwing up, "he's been hurley most of the morning."?

 

[bobbyderegis]

You learn something every day!
Bobby in Boston

 

[chestermikeuk]

Rocker Washer

This washer is listed in Lee Maxwells museum, listed as Hurley Manufacturing , Chicago, ILcirca 1922.

Go to database & search Hurley

Its also in a lot of washer archives, it is used in the "Secret Life of Washing Machines" series....

I would imagine with all the ribs it could be a good washer in its day..

Interesting about the slang ....It is still used "Hurley Burley" a lot, as in, a hiatus, hustle and bustle, rough & tumble, chaiotic ...

i.e.Shoppers racing to the sales..."Ohhh the hurley burley of it all"..

Oldewash

 

[petek]

I think I remember seeing one of those in the Henry Ford Museum as well there was a somewhat similar early dishwasher.

 

[oldwasherguy]

it kinda reminds me of my copper easy wringer.

 

[launderess]

Have a Hurley iron press on it's way. Apparently Hurely was big on laundry appliances.

 

[launderess]

Don't know about "Hurley" but often enough in high school we used "hurl" for unswallowing. Guess it was because projectile vomit is rather like hurling something.

L.

 

[westytoploader]

Wow...

Now I bet that thing doesn't have a safety release!!

 

[oldwasherguy]

yes it has a safety release.its the tall skinny thing on top of the wringer. just hit that and it will release all the pressure off the rollers.don.

 

[spinout]

My great grandmother had one of these rockers. My grandfather still remembers it vividly; and as he describes it, it made a loud, characteristic whoosh every time it rocked.

 

[toggleswitch]

ZAP!

all that metal and probably ungrounded/unearthed.

 

[Designgeek]

... and potentially a very clever design too, because if the timing was correct, the motor would only have to lift the differential weight on one side of the pivot at a time. On the other hand, given the wrong amount of water & clothes, at the wrong speed, you could end up with a resonance that could cause it to walk across the floor or otherwise misbehave. And the gap between the tub and the frame might also be a hazardous pinch point, especially for kids' hands.

Strictly speaking this may also qualify as the world's first horizontal-axis top loader.

 

[sudsmaster]

Hurley is also the name of the man who won many $ millions in the lottery on LOST...