Who invented spinning?
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e2l-arry
Well-known member
I'd guess
It was the Easy Spindrier. The first Bendix automatics used spinning for extraction but the Easy predates those by probably 20 years or so.
It was the Easy Spindrier. The first Bendix automatics used spinning for extraction but the Easy predates those by probably 20 years or so.
ABC
ABC had a spindrier too of that era.
ABC had a spindrier too of that era.
Centrifuge
It does not answer your question but makes quite interesting reading:
en.wikipedia.org
It does not answer your question but makes quite interesting reading:
Centrifuge - Wikipedia
The oldest machine on oldewash.com with an attached spin drier is a machine of the Syracuse Washing Machine Corporation from 1918.
http://www.oldewash.com/index.asp
But there might be older machines that had some kind of spinning action.
http://www.oldewash.com/index.asp
But there might be older machines that had some kind of spinning action.
Savage Arms Company was the first in the USA to patent separate spin driers for domestic use in the 1920's. See: http://www.leagle.com/decision/1951...MATIC WASHER CO. v. EASY WASHING MACHINE CORP.
Prior to this while having been in use for commercial/steam laundries since early 1900's or late 1800's extractors for laundry were limited to that sphere for several reasons. First and foremost was the slow roll out of electrical power which is required to run the motors. The other worry was just that, the motors for such extractors were large and required decent supply of power to provide the torque necessary to start and move spin baskets. The other problems were vibrations for even with commercial extractors lacking suspensions and being bolted down if improperly loaded (or even if) they still generated forces that caused shaking at best for the things to fly at worse.
Other issues were that such extractors were manually operated, that is required human intervention to stop and start cycles.
Long story short the answer to the OP's query points to Whirlpool(then part of the Upton and Nineteen Hundred Companies) introduced the first fully automatic washing machine in 1947. It was sold under the Sears "Kenmore" brand as well as the newly created "Whirlpool" company.
Patent: http://www.google.com/patents/US2521159
Prior to this while having been in use for commercial/steam laundries since early 1900's or late 1800's extractors for laundry were limited to that sphere for several reasons. First and foremost was the slow roll out of electrical power which is required to run the motors. The other worry was just that, the motors for such extractors were large and required decent supply of power to provide the torque necessary to start and move spin baskets. The other problems were vibrations for even with commercial extractors lacking suspensions and being bolted down if improperly loaded (or even if) they still generated forces that caused shaking at best for the things to fly at worse.
Other issues were that such extractors were manually operated, that is required human intervention to stop and start cycles.
Long story short the answer to the OP's query points to Whirlpool(then part of the Upton and Nineteen Hundred Companies) introduced the first fully automatic washing machine in 1947. It was sold under the Sears "Kenmore" brand as well as the newly created "Whirlpool" company.
Patent: http://www.google.com/patents/US2521159
neptunebob
Well-known member
Leonardo DaVinci?
It could be an idea that dates back to ancient Greeks and Romans when they washed laundry in the creek. I would not be surprised if Leonardo had a machine that spun togas.
It could be an idea that dates back to ancient Greeks and Romans when they washed laundry in the creek. I would not be surprised if Leonardo had a machine that spun togas.
Bon Appetit!
Long before the automatic washer, French chefs and cooks were using primitive salad spinners made out of wire baskets within solid baskets that spun from a pull-string. They operated much like a kid's toy top; you wound the string around an axle and yanked it. You can still find these in antiques stores. Since many clothes washing contraptions were invented by farmers I wonder if the first spinner was a hijacked lettuce dryer.
I still remember an evening, not too long ago, when a bunch of us were in stiches as our friend Rich and his wife Barb were describing a dinner with Rich's mother in Arkansas, proudly presenting her salad at the dinner table and announcing that she had washed and dried the greens in her GE mini-basket. She got an "A" for ingenuity, but, alas, flunked sanitation.
Long before the automatic washer, French chefs and cooks were using primitive salad spinners made out of wire baskets within solid baskets that spun from a pull-string. They operated much like a kid's toy top; you wound the string around an axle and yanked it. You can still find these in antiques stores. Since many clothes washing contraptions were invented by farmers I wonder if the first spinner was a hijacked lettuce dryer.
I still remember an evening, not too long ago, when a bunch of us were in stiches as our friend Rich and his wife Barb were describing a dinner with Rich's mother in Arkansas, proudly presenting her salad at the dinner table and announcing that she had washed and dried the greens in her GE mini-basket. She got an "A" for ingenuity, but, alas, flunked sanitation.
Was going to mention the French
Actually the idea behind laundry extractors came from someone (cannot remember if it was a Frenchman or not) observing those French salad spinners.
Actually the idea behind laundry extractors came from someone (cannot remember if it was a Frenchman or not) observing those French salad spinners.
That one cannot remember
All one can recall is how the idea came to the man. It was from laundry related website one read ages ago. As you can imagine one has read no small number of such sites so please forgive if memory is foggy.
All one can recall is how the idea came to the man. It was from laundry related website one read ages ago. As you can imagine one has read no small number of such sites so please forgive if memory is foggy.
Not only salad spinners-how bout the cream spinner separators found on many older farms?I suppose in the days before electricity they were powered by cranks, gas motors or the belt PTO found on those older tractors.On most non electrified farms in older days a gas motor or tractor PTO was used in places where a "Motor" would have been used.
From an article in the July, 1957 Electrical Merchandising
As early as 1920, the Laundryette--long extinct--used this method and the Savage came on the market with it in 1923. (The Savage used a copper outer tub with a tilted, revolving basket that tumbled the wash <think Westinghouse's tilted tub>. After the water was drained, the basket was positioned so tht its back was flat and parallel with the floor. Then it would spin.) In 1926 Easy Washing Machine Corp. at Syracuse, NY, brought out a machine destined to be known for this quality. The trade dubbed the new machine a "spinner," and it took its place as a desirable method of laundering.
It is interesting to note that the drain pump grew out of the necessity of the spinner to have one to carry off the water as fast as it was extracted.
As early as 1920, the Laundryette--long extinct--used this method and the Savage came on the market with it in 1923. (The Savage used a copper outer tub with a tilted, revolving basket that tumbled the wash <think Westinghouse's tilted tub>. After the water was drained, the basket was positioned so tht its back was flat and parallel with the floor. Then it would spin.) In 1926 Easy Washing Machine Corp. at Syracuse, NY, brought out a machine destined to be known for this quality. The trade dubbed the new machine a "spinner," and it took its place as a desirable method of laundering.
It is interesting to note that the drain pump grew out of the necessity of the spinner to have one to carry off the water as fast as it was extracted.
"...drain pump grew out of the necessity of the spinner.
Again this was mainly for the domestic market.
Just as with commercial washing machines then and mostly still today extractors in use early in the prior century used various gravity drain systems. That is a valve was opened (either manually or whatever) and water emptied out into a trough or large drain.
Spin driers/extractors today both in commercial and domestic use often do not have pumps but simply drain. The motor is used only to power the centrifuge.
Savage Arms heavily advertised it's washing machines with spin functions as doing the "whole wash" in that laundry was cleaned and spun dry within the same tub. No messing about with wringer and the inherent dangers of those contraptions. Spin drying was also promoted as being better for textiles/laundry because it did not subject laundry to the crushing forces of a wringer/mangle. This meant among other things the nap of certain fabrics was not crushed (think terry toweling) and buckles, buttons and other fasteners were not in danger of being harmed.
The first bit (crushing of textiles and or creases caused by hard mangling) were a larger worry when line drying was still the norm for households. One assumes with modern tumble dryers much of those worries were lessened or vanished. [this post was last edited: 8/30/2014-16:43]
Again this was mainly for the domestic market.
Just as with commercial washing machines then and mostly still today extractors in use early in the prior century used various gravity drain systems. That is a valve was opened (either manually or whatever) and water emptied out into a trough or large drain.
Spin driers/extractors today both in commercial and domestic use often do not have pumps but simply drain. The motor is used only to power the centrifuge.
Savage Arms heavily advertised it's washing machines with spin functions as doing the "whole wash" in that laundry was cleaned and spun dry within the same tub. No messing about with wringer and the inherent dangers of those contraptions. Spin drying was also promoted as being better for textiles/laundry because it did not subject laundry to the crushing forces of a wringer/mangle. This meant among other things the nap of certain fabrics was not crushed (think terry toweling) and buckles, buttons and other fasteners were not in danger of being harmed.
The first bit (crushing of textiles and or creases caused by hard mangling) were a larger worry when line drying was still the norm for households. One assumes with modern tumble dryers much of those worries were lessened or vanished. [this post was last edited: 8/30/2014-16:43]
kenmoreguy89
Well-known member
Not sure when exactly the spin extraction meets with laundry and how exactly the idea (if we can speak of idea) happened, if someone ever patented the first laundry spinner, or washing machine with spinner incorporated, but I guess the thing of spin in laundry dates back to around the 20s also, and anyway I suppose following the electric motor, am not sure if sorts of spinners were present in laundries having steam engines....
Anyway, the thing of spinning as said applies historically to 2 main operations, separation and extraction, many of which known since the ancient days, cream separation perhaps is the first example for which centrifuge action was used to separate, and perhaps the first uses of centrifuge in extraction was for honey.....
Let's say, that what could not be extracted with pressing, like salad, then had to be spinned.....so for certain things you could not do otherwise even before.
But:
After the advent of electricity in households and later motorization and advent of electric appliances, like OTOH had been in in industrial revolution (in industrial circumstances) so after the steam engine discovery, we had seen how furtherly how many extraction operations that before were made by pressing, then switched to spinning, this is because spinning avoided all the pressing work that otherwise had to be done piece by piece, or that even though not requiring more time and efforts with pressing, and so possible to do all in one operation, then required lot of work to clean up the extracted product from byproducts of the pressing extraction method, not to mention that they allowed to spin in bulk quantities of heavy stuff that otherwise you could not reach with human force, so spinning extraction as for separation in many cases became possible and appliable to certain uses only thanks to the motors, so again, that made possible either to reach high speeds or power/forces that otherwise you could not reach manually or with horse power, whatever, and so giving results you could only get with pressing, but wthouth giving a lot of accessory work ahead because of it.
In laundry:
Of course to emulate the action of a spinner you need a motor, I mean, I am not aware of laundry spinners you could activate with hand power, perhaps pedal, but likely not fast enough to be comparable to a wringer result, and that anyway would be a huge separate unit to have, let alone to include to a manual washing machine, not much worth it, an average person can not anyway manually spin all at once a whole tub of clothes though and get a decent result as of today, at least i am not aware of stuff/objects in the past and present able to do that...
In the case of laundry, I think the electric motor played a main role for it's application in this field, like the others extraction fields, it allowed to avoid to squeeze in the mangle/wringer piece by piece, and allowed more extraction power....
Many machines then still came with the wringer... "wringer washers", we got twin tubs along with separate spinners, and finally spinning automatics.
But cannot tell if the appliacation of spin in laundry machines, came from seeing something like a salad spinner of a french chef, it would seem a kind of urban legend.... I personally find it bizzarre.... why french then? Was it just the fench?
Ok that first patented salad spinner is french...but...it seems unlikely this story.
I mean, the idea of a salad spinner did born thanks to the common technique,to wash salad and collect it in a wire basket and twist it....later did born basket with lateral upper guards on purpose, and later ones with a center hole on purpose to put the sink on an heavy base, even later one with a pump-like mechanism, and later the single hand cranked unit , which was the salad spinner as we know today, french patented salad spinner from a certain Jean something, founder of moulinex company, famous for hand cranked kitchen stuff, vegetable mills hand cranked "mouli legumes", grinders and such, moulin OTOH means mill in french...
Other things than the wire basket, did born much after the earlier documented laundry spinners or spinning washers we can find...so.....not sure how much truth relies in the french chefs or salad spinner tales....
Anyway.....
I am prone to think that it was just thanks to the electric motor, and so in laundry like for the rest,it made possible to go with spin for extractions that otherwise were done by pressing, achieving job faster and saving further work.
[this post was last edited: 8/30/2014-19:22]
Anyway, the thing of spinning as said applies historically to 2 main operations, separation and extraction, many of which known since the ancient days, cream separation perhaps is the first example for which centrifuge action was used to separate, and perhaps the first uses of centrifuge in extraction was for honey.....
Let's say, that what could not be extracted with pressing, like salad, then had to be spinned.....so for certain things you could not do otherwise even before.
But:
After the advent of electricity in households and later motorization and advent of electric appliances, like OTOH had been in in industrial revolution (in industrial circumstances) so after the steam engine discovery, we had seen how furtherly how many extraction operations that before were made by pressing, then switched to spinning, this is because spinning avoided all the pressing work that otherwise had to be done piece by piece, or that even though not requiring more time and efforts with pressing, and so possible to do all in one operation, then required lot of work to clean up the extracted product from byproducts of the pressing extraction method, not to mention that they allowed to spin in bulk quantities of heavy stuff that otherwise you could not reach with human force, so spinning extraction as for separation in many cases became possible and appliable to certain uses only thanks to the motors, so again, that made possible either to reach high speeds or power/forces that otherwise you could not reach manually or with horse power, whatever, and so giving results you could only get with pressing, but wthouth giving a lot of accessory work ahead because of it.
In laundry:
Of course to emulate the action of a spinner you need a motor, I mean, I am not aware of laundry spinners you could activate with hand power, perhaps pedal, but likely not fast enough to be comparable to a wringer result, and that anyway would be a huge separate unit to have, let alone to include to a manual washing machine, not much worth it, an average person can not anyway manually spin all at once a whole tub of clothes though and get a decent result as of today, at least i am not aware of stuff/objects in the past and present able to do that...
In the case of laundry, I think the electric motor played a main role for it's application in this field, like the others extraction fields, it allowed to avoid to squeeze in the mangle/wringer piece by piece, and allowed more extraction power....
Many machines then still came with the wringer... "wringer washers", we got twin tubs along with separate spinners, and finally spinning automatics.
But cannot tell if the appliacation of spin in laundry machines, came from seeing something like a salad spinner of a french chef, it would seem a kind of urban legend.... I personally find it bizzarre.... why french then? Was it just the fench?
Ok that first patented salad spinner is french...but...it seems unlikely this story.
I mean, the idea of a salad spinner did born thanks to the common technique,to wash salad and collect it in a wire basket and twist it....later did born basket with lateral upper guards on purpose, and later ones with a center hole on purpose to put the sink on an heavy base, even later one with a pump-like mechanism, and later the single hand cranked unit , which was the salad spinner as we know today, french patented salad spinner from a certain Jean something, founder of moulinex company, famous for hand cranked kitchen stuff, vegetable mills hand cranked "mouli legumes", grinders and such, moulin OTOH means mill in french...
Other things than the wire basket, did born much after the earlier documented laundry spinners or spinning washers we can find...so.....not sure how much truth relies in the french chefs or salad spinner tales....
Anyway.....
I am prone to think that it was just thanks to the electric motor, and so in laundry like for the rest,it made possible to go with spin for extractions that otherwise were done by pressing, achieving job faster and saving further work.
[this post was last edited: 8/30/2014-19:22]
kenmoreguy89
Well-known member
Not sure when exactly the spin extraction meets with laundry and how exactly the idea happened, if someone ever patented the first laundry spinner, or washing machine with spinner incorporated, but I guess the thing of spin in laundry dates back to around the 20s also, and anyway I suppose following the electric motor, am not sure if sorts of spinners were present in laundries having steam engines....
Anyway, the thing of spinning as said applies historically to 2 main operations, separation and extraction, many of which known since the ancient days, cream separation perhaps is the first example for which centrifuge action was used to separate, and perhaps the first uses of centrifuge in extraction was for honey.....
Let's say, that what could not be extracted with pressing, like salad, then had to be spinned.....so for certain things you could not do otherwise even before.
But:
After the advent of electricity in households and later motorization and advent of electric appliances, like OTOH had been in in industrial revolution (in industrial circumstances) so after the steam engine discovery, we had seen how furtherly how many extraction operations that before were made by pressing, then switched to spinning, this is because spinning avoided all the pressing work that otherwise had to be done piece by piece, or that even though not requiring more time and efforts with pressing, and so possible to do all in one operation, then required lot of work to clean up the extracted product from byproducts of the pressing extraction method, not to mention that they allowed to spin in bulk quantities of heavy stuff that otherwise you could not reach with human force, so spinning extraction as for separation in many cases became possible and appliable to certain uses only thanks to the motors, so again, that made possible either to reach high speeds or power/forces that otherwise you could not reach manually or with horse power, whatever, and so giving results you could only get with pressing, but wthouth giving a lot of accessory work ahead because of it.
In laundry:
Of course to emulate the action of a spinner you need a motor, I mean, I am not aware of laundry spinners you could activate with hand power, perhaps pedal, but likely not fast enough to be comparable to a wringer result, and that anyway would be a huge separate unit to have, let alone to include to a manual washing machine, not much worth it, you can not anyway manually spin all at once a whole tub of clothes though and get a decent result as of today, at least i am not aware of stuff/objects able to do that...
In the case of laundry, I think the electric motor played a main role for it's application in this field, like the others extraction fields, it allowed to avoid to squeeze in the mangle/wringer piece by piece, and allowed more extraction power....
Many machines then still came with the wringer... "wringer washers", we got twin tubs along with separate spinners, and finally spinning automatics.
But cannot tell if the appliacation of spin in laundry machines, came from seeing something like a salad spinner of a french chef, it would seem a kind of urban legend.... I personally find it bizzarre.... why french then? Was it just the fench?
Ok that first patented salad spinner is french...but...it seems unlikely this story.
I mean, the idea of a salad spinner did born thanks to the common technique,to wash salad and collect it in a wire basket and twist it....later did born basket with lateral upper guards on purpose, and later ones with a center hole on purpose to put the sink on an heavy base, even later one with a pump-like mechanism, and later the single hand cranked unit , which was the salad spinner as we know today, french patented salad spinner from a certain Jean something, founder of moulinex company, famous for hand cranked kitchen stuff, vegetable mills hand cranked "mouli legumes", grinders and such, moulin OTOH means mill in french...
Other things than the wire basket, did born after the first spinning wahser did born...so.....not sure how much truth relies in the french chefs tales....
Anyway.....
I am prone to think that it was just thanks to the electric motor, and so in laundry like for the rest,it made possible to go with spin for extractions that otherwise were done by pressing, achieving job faster and saving further work.
Anyway, the thing of spinning as said applies historically to 2 main operations, separation and extraction, many of which known since the ancient days, cream separation perhaps is the first example for which centrifuge action was used to separate, and perhaps the first uses of centrifuge in extraction was for honey.....
Let's say, that what could not be extracted with pressing, like salad, then had to be spinned.....so for certain things you could not do otherwise even before.
But:
After the advent of electricity in households and later motorization and advent of electric appliances, like OTOH had been in in industrial revolution (in industrial circumstances) so after the steam engine discovery, we had seen how furtherly how many extraction operations that before were made by pressing, then switched to spinning, this is because spinning avoided all the pressing work that otherwise had to be done piece by piece, or that even though not requiring more time and efforts with pressing, and so possible to do all in one operation, then required lot of work to clean up the extracted product from byproducts of the pressing extraction method, not to mention that they allowed to spin in bulk quantities of heavy stuff that otherwise you could not reach with human force, so spinning extraction as for separation in many cases became possible and appliable to certain uses only thanks to the motors, so again, that made possible either to reach high speeds or power/forces that otherwise you could not reach manually or with horse power, whatever, and so giving results you could only get with pressing, but wthouth giving a lot of accessory work ahead because of it.
In laundry:
Of course to emulate the action of a spinner you need a motor, I mean, I am not aware of laundry spinners you could activate with hand power, perhaps pedal, but likely not fast enough to be comparable to a wringer result, and that anyway would be a huge separate unit to have, let alone to include to a manual washing machine, not much worth it, you can not anyway manually spin all at once a whole tub of clothes though and get a decent result as of today, at least i am not aware of stuff/objects able to do that...
In the case of laundry, I think the electric motor played a main role for it's application in this field, like the others extraction fields, it allowed to avoid to squeeze in the mangle/wringer piece by piece, and allowed more extraction power....
Many machines then still came with the wringer... "wringer washers", we got twin tubs along with separate spinners, and finally spinning automatics.
But cannot tell if the appliacation of spin in laundry machines, came from seeing something like a salad spinner of a french chef, it would seem a kind of urban legend.... I personally find it bizzarre.... why french then? Was it just the fench?
Ok that first patented salad spinner is french...but...it seems unlikely this story.
I mean, the idea of a salad spinner did born thanks to the common technique,to wash salad and collect it in a wire basket and twist it....later did born basket with lateral upper guards on purpose, and later ones with a center hole on purpose to put the sink on an heavy base, even later one with a pump-like mechanism, and later the single hand cranked unit , which was the salad spinner as we know today, french patented salad spinner from a certain Jean something, founder of moulinex company, famous for hand cranked kitchen stuff, vegetable mills hand cranked "mouli legumes", grinders and such, moulin OTOH means mill in french...
Other things than the wire basket, did born after the first spinning wahser did born...so.....not sure how much truth relies in the french chefs tales....
Anyway.....
I am prone to think that it was just thanks to the electric motor, and so in laundry like for the rest,it made possible to go with spin for extractions that otherwise were done by pressing, achieving job faster and saving further work.
Right then.
First salad greens have been consumed in France and other parts of Europe off and on since the days of ancient Rome. They certainly were being consumed in the 19th century (1800's) where the idea of removing water from rinsed greens via centrifugal force came upon some bright blub.
What was done probably is that veggies were place into some sort of container or net and simply flung around by hand like a whirligig. That surely would generate the forces to "wring" water out even if the process was messy, labour intensive and dangerous to anyone getting too close.
Frenchmen Jean Mantelet and Gilberte Fouineteau (founders of Moulinex company) came up with the idea and patented the same for using a container contraption powered by hand to spin salad greens dry, but again the idea had been out there long before.
In 1851 Johann Seyrig a Swiss inventor patented a machine called a "Hydro-Extractor" for use in washing and *drying* by centrifugal force various substances and things from cotton to separating sugar from molasses. Hydro because the machine was designed to separate (extract) fluids/water from solids.
Early extractors often fell into two camps of motive power; over (line) driven and those powered from underneath via a motor that was powered by water, steam or electric.
In the early days of the Industrial Revolution where steam power was ever where from laundries to factories line drives were every where. If you seen pictures of such places and or been in one you'll notice all those belts attached to shafts and what not. That is how power wash transferred from the main steam engines that drove the main shaft or shafts to various equipment.
See: http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/antique-machinery-history/line-shaft-laundry-207917/
and: https://ehive.com/account/3671/object/36172/Spin_Dryer
Both types of extractors had their followers and detractors but many felt line driven extractors had more of a tendency to go out of balance and required more effort to get up to speed.
First salad greens have been consumed in France and other parts of Europe off and on since the days of ancient Rome. They certainly were being consumed in the 19th century (1800's) where the idea of removing water from rinsed greens via centrifugal force came upon some bright blub.
What was done probably is that veggies were place into some sort of container or net and simply flung around by hand like a whirligig. That surely would generate the forces to "wring" water out even if the process was messy, labour intensive and dangerous to anyone getting too close.
Frenchmen Jean Mantelet and Gilberte Fouineteau (founders of Moulinex company) came up with the idea and patented the same for using a container contraption powered by hand to spin salad greens dry, but again the idea had been out there long before.
In 1851 Johann Seyrig a Swiss inventor patented a machine called a "Hydro-Extractor" for use in washing and *drying* by centrifugal force various substances and things from cotton to separating sugar from molasses. Hydro because the machine was designed to separate (extract) fluids/water from solids.
Early extractors often fell into two camps of motive power; over (line) driven and those powered from underneath via a motor that was powered by water, steam or electric.
In the early days of the Industrial Revolution where steam power was ever where from laundries to factories line drives were every where. If you seen pictures of such places and or been in one you'll notice all those belts attached to shafts and what not. That is how power wash transferred from the main steam engines that drove the main shaft or shafts to various equipment.
See: http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/antique-machinery-history/line-shaft-laundry-207917/
and: https://ehive.com/account/3671/object/36172/Spin_Dryer
Both types of extractors had their followers and detractors but many felt line driven extractors had more of a tendency to go out of balance and required more effort to get up to speed.
