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In the 1600’s we had no washing machines at
all. Scottish women The cataract washer was invented in 1831. It
looked like a cylinder. Howard Snyder invented the electric washing
machine in 1922. Howard was a mechanic who liked to play around with machinery
and also fix things up like older washers. He worked for Maytag. Frederick
Maytag, the founder of the company, |
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would put water in a large bucket. Then they would set their
clothes in the water and dance to an old folk song in the bucket of water to
clean their clothes. Prairie women in the U.S. cleaned clothes in boiling water.
They did their laundry on Monday so that their clothes would be done on Sunday
for church. They rubbed their clothes on a washboard, which was in the water.
They wrung clothes out by hand then hung them up to dry on a clothesline. They
brought many small, heavy buckets of water and poured them into a bigger bucket
and heated it over an open fire to bring the water to a boil.
It had 3 blocks of wood in it and worked by putting
water in it then putting clothes in. The cataract washer had a crank on the
outside and cleaned clothes by turning the crank, which in turn made the blocks
of wood turn and beat the dirt out of the clothes. It was also easy enough for a
child to use.
told his workers he wanted a better washer
and then told them to get to work on one. One day Snyder came to Frederick and
said it came to him – it was how to make a better washer. He designed an
agitator type of washer that is still in use today. The agitator is in the
center of your washing machine. It spins back and forth helping soap and water
remove dirt from your clothes. The way it worked is it was plugged into an
electrical outlet and then you would click a start button and it would run for
an hour at a time. This is the type of washing machine people use today.