Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Say then, everyone, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Foke OBAM
Speaker 1: and Laurena. Here's someone on Facebook. Wanted to know about
Speaker 1: some tech related thing, right, yeah, Thomas on Facebook road
Speaker 1: in and to to us two guys and one gal
Speaker 1: here at tex Stuff. Hey, nol you were represented. Nol
Speaker 1: Is is smiling from behind his barrier, very gentitely, raising
Speaker 1: the roof. I believe, yes, I think so um, but yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so so Thomas wanted to know now that we have
Speaker 1: done an episode about washing machine, how dryers were Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, excellent. Yeah, and guys, remember we asked at
Speaker 1: the end of every episode if you have ideas, send
Speaker 1: them in and we mean it. Yeah, do that. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, we're talking about dryers. So what was
Speaker 1: the first clothes dryer, Lauren? The Sun? Yeah, that thing
Speaker 1: is just pulling so much double duty, I mean triple duty,
Speaker 1: like like quintuple duty. What's what's above quickly, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: infinite duty. Yeah, there's a lot of duty going on
Speaker 1: with the sun, including drying our clothes. So clearly, if
Speaker 1: you've ever had to dry close without having the use
Speaker 1: of a dryer. I've done this. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people have done this at some point or other.
Speaker 1: Maybe fewer today than back when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: But it depends on where you live. If you're in
Speaker 1: the middle of a city, perhaps yeah, maybe not so much.
Speaker 1: You might have gone to a laundromat or something. But
Speaker 1: most of if you look at history, most people use
Speaker 1: the sun in some form or another by laying wet
Speaker 1: clothes that have just been washed out on on on
Speaker 1: a rock or hanging it on a line or over
Speaker 1: the branch of a tree yep, and just letting the
Speaker 1: sun do its thing evaporate all that water. Usually take
Speaker 1: you know, a couple hours um depending upon where you
Speaker 1: were at, how hot it was, how humid it was.
Speaker 1: Humidity could slow things down, obviously, not only dried up
Speaker 1: the clothing, it would also cause colors to fade over time,
Speaker 1: sometimes pretty quickly, depending upon the dye being used. Now,
Speaker 1: sometimes you plan for that, that was what you wanted.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Romans used to use various types of
Speaker 1: minerals and rub them in on the cloth. They would
Speaker 1: make during the drying process. An arctic to um specifically
Speaker 1: fade or or even bleach it. Yeah, so that way
Speaker 1: you get that nice white toga look, um, and then
Speaker 1: you can go to all the parties because in Roman
Speaker 1: times they were all toga parties. Okay, I was gonna
Speaker 1: see if I can get an eye roll, but instead
Speaker 1: of Lauren just gave me the staring right into my
Speaker 1: soul look, which is terrifying. So we're gonna move on. Okay.
Speaker 1: So so wash your technology evolved, Um it really intricately,
Speaker 1: as as you may have heard in our previous episode.
Speaker 1: But since the sun is relatively effective and drying clothes
Speaker 1: this way is not really difficult, backbreaking, time consuming work,
Speaker 1: dryer technology didn't really develop along the same lines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just it wasn't as big a deal because yet,
Speaker 1: to wash something you had to put in a lot
Speaker 1: of effort, right, you had to, especially before the washing machine,
Speaker 1: you had to scrub things manually or stomp on them
Speaker 1: or beat them against rocks or throw them away and
Speaker 1: get new stuff. I mean, it just was not easy
Speaker 1: to do, and so there was a need to develop
Speaker 1: automation there. It just it felt like there's this is
Speaker 1: so much work. It's it's the woman's dread as we
Speaker 1: said in the last podcast, according to one quote, so
Speaker 1: that made sense. But for drying, like you said, it
Speaker 1: was it was free to dry it by the sun,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have to you know, put in any
Speaker 1: kind of expense there except maybe for a clothesline and
Speaker 1: maybe some maybe some closed pins, but that's about it.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, you just had to lay it out
Speaker 1: and collect it. That's all the labor that was involved.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't as imprintant to develop a dryer, but
Speaker 1: it didn't make things convenient, right, You couldn't have dry
Speaker 1: clothes very quickly using that rate. So if it happened
Speaker 1: or something like that, Yeah, So there certainly were people
Speaker 1: who were thinking there's to be a way to dry
Speaker 1: close even if the weather is bad, or to do
Speaker 1: it more quickly than just putting them all on the
Speaker 1: sun for a few hours. And I'm sure that a
Speaker 1: lot of people were doing this. But the history of
Speaker 1: this kind of thing is a wee bit contentious, as
Speaker 1: we find out every time we look into the history
Speaker 1: of something. Yeah, as it turns out, when you want
Speaker 1: to look at the history of something that's been around
Speaker 1: for at least a couple uh, like like a century,
Speaker 1: or more, and especially something that was done by the
Speaker 1: lower classes who were not writing about it or or
Speaker 1: certainly not contributing to scientific journals very frequently, or perhaps
Speaker 1: didn't bother to patent something, then it's hard to find
Speaker 1: reliable records. So here's a big caveat for all the
Speaker 1: historical stuff you're about to listen to, dear listeners. The
Speaker 1: caveat is that we did a lot of background research
Speaker 1: to try and verify as many claims as we could,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them are unverifiable, meaning that there
Speaker 1: are no primary sources that are definitive. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of sources that quote each other, but it becomes
Speaker 1: kind of a circular thing. Yeah, which does happen on
Speaker 1: the internet. Uh, not entirely and frequently right, Um, But
Speaker 1: so so, most of what we're going to tell you
Speaker 1: comes directly from the U. S. Patent Office. That's what
Speaker 1: I relied upon most heavily. Although our first example is
Speaker 1: not among them because it wasn't a United States invention,
Speaker 1: it was actually a French one. This is one you're
Speaker 1: going to see if you ever do a search for
Speaker 1: the history of dryers, this is going to pop up
Speaker 1: all the time. Usually the year is specifically seventeen, but
Speaker 1: the best I'm going to say is around the year
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred. A French inventor known only as Poshan p
Speaker 1: O c h O N sometimes listen as M. Posh On,
Speaker 1: but I believe the M is for Monsieur Poshan, not
Speaker 1: necessarily a name that begins within, created what he called
Speaker 1: a ventilator, which to me sounds like a weapon you
Speaker 1: would pick up in Duke Newcombe. But in this case,
Speaker 1: a ventilator was a metal drum that had some small
Speaker 1: holes in it. So that might start to sound familiar
Speaker 1: already to anyone who's used a dryer. And you put
Speaker 1: your wet clothing into the drum and turn it using
Speaker 1: a hand crank, right, and you think, well, okay, so
Speaker 1: now you're just turning a drum full of wet clothes
Speaker 1: with holes in it. What else you have to put
Speaker 1: it near a fire, yeah, as your source of heat.
Speaker 1: And now here's the thing. Um. Sometimes this meant that
Speaker 1: clothes would get a little uh you know, burnt, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little little extra crispy um or or full of
Speaker 1: smoke in any case, Yeah, so you would end up
Speaker 1: damaging clothes this way, And according to most reports this
Speaker 1: is the first tumble dryer, but didn't catch on, mostly
Speaker 1: because of the downsides, Right, the idea that you would
Speaker 1: end up damaging clothes, Well, if you're gonna damage them,
Speaker 1: then that's not helpful at all. So the interesting thing
Speaker 1: to me is that this basic approach that he took
Speaker 1: ends up being the the kind of the central design
Speaker 1: of dryers in the future. It would just take a
Speaker 1: long time to perfect the heating elements, like a couple years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so sorry, but yeah, but it's interesting that again, we
Speaker 1: couldn't really find any primary sources on this, so this
Speaker 1: story could be apocryphal. However, I'm going to go ahead
Speaker 1: and say that it sounds like it's possible, so we'll
Speaker 1: give it a pass. Sure. Then in this is the
Speaker 1: next really official dryer technology that we have to report on,
Speaker 1: and it's one that we actually mentioned in our episode
Speaker 1: about washing machines. That's when um Ellen Edgley invented a
Speaker 1: ringer to sit on top of washing machines and help
Speaker 1: dry out the laundry before you hang it on a line.
Speaker 1: So so that's that's squeezing mechanism to the two rollers
Speaker 1: and it rolls the clothing between and squeezes them with
Speaker 1: incredible pressure that could crush your fingers if you get
Speaker 1: them too close. Don't do it right right. The design
Speaker 1: would later be integrated into washing machine models until these
Speaker 1: tumble dryers later caught on. Yeah, so two, we have
Speaker 1: another African American inventor, this one by the name George T.
Speaker 1: Samps And, who filed a patent for a clothes dryer.
Speaker 1: In this case, he spelled dryer d R I E R,
Speaker 1: which some of the patents are in that spelling. Some
Speaker 1: of them are d R y E R I. Can
Speaker 1: do what they want. His invention wasn't a tumble dryer, however,
Speaker 1: although I saw a lot of notes that said it
Speaker 1: was an improvement or, in the case of some of them,
Speaker 1: a betterment of Poshan's approach. Uh, it wasn't wasn't like, No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a tumble dryer. The I think the betterment
Speaker 1: or improvement would be that he used a stove as
Speaker 1: the heat source as opposed to an open flame, so
Speaker 1: it reduced the kind of damage that could happen. But yes, he,
Speaker 1: as he pointed out, it was not a tumble dryer.
Speaker 1: It was not like a drum that you put clothes in.
Speaker 1: It was more of a frame, and you would put
Speaker 1: the clothes within the frame, secure it in the frame,
Speaker 1: and then put the suspend the frame near the stove
Speaker 1: and the heat would would end up evaporating the water
Speaker 1: out of the clothing. So, uh, it's in that pattern,
Speaker 1: is in the records, so you can actually go and
Speaker 1: look at it. And if you look at it, you'll
Speaker 1: see it is not a tumble dryer. It's not the
Speaker 1: same style as posh on. So that tells me something else.
Speaker 1: It tells me that some of the websites that I
Speaker 1: pulled up while I was doing this just didn't go
Speaker 1: and look at the patents. They just reported it as
Speaker 1: being like this was an improvement on that tumble dryer,
Speaker 1: And uh, always go that extra step. I'm saying that
Speaker 1: to all of our listeners because I expect that they
Speaker 1: will occasionally have to write things like if you're a student,
Speaker 1: you may have to write a paper. This is why
Speaker 1: taking that extra step, Like if you just find a
Speaker 1: web page that says it's about that stuff, see if
Speaker 1: you can find a primary source, because it's always going
Speaker 1: to give you a better idea of what the real
Speaker 1: story n Then we have a patent by Seward H.
Speaker 1: Davis for his clothes drying machine. And it's interesting. So
Speaker 1: now he's decided to incorporate an oven directly into the
Speaker 1: device to generate heat. So we're still creating an oven.
Speaker 1: It's pre heating air because obviously an oven's not going
Speaker 1: to generate heat at the speed where you could just
Speaker 1: blow air across it and it's going to be hot, right,
Speaker 1: so you would. But he also incorporate a motor in
Speaker 1: his It was a motor that was connected by pulleys
Speaker 1: to a rotating drum, so going back to that post
Speaker 1: on approach, right, and it would rotate in one direction
Speaker 1: for a few turns and then go back the other way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because according to Davis, you didn't want to continuously rotated
Speaker 1: in one direction or else the clothes would become hopelessly
Speaker 1: entangled with one another, and uh, it would just end
Speaker 1: up being a big mess. So his design had it
Speaker 1: where it would rotate one way then the other, and
Speaker 1: that would prevent the clothes from getting, yeah, from clumping
Speaker 1: and getting all like super friendly inside the dryer. You
Speaker 1: want your clothes to be a little bit antagonistic, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't. You don't want any fraternization inside the tumblers.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying, um, so yeah, pretty interesting. And then
Speaker 1: he also he also specifically pointed out in the pattern
Speaker 1: that the whole idea was to allow the clothes to fall,
Speaker 1: to tumble, like you didn't want to just spin and
Speaker 1: try and force the water out, but to tumble, because
Speaker 1: that tumbling motion would have it go through that hot
Speaker 1: air and thus evaporate the water much more quickly, pushing
Speaker 1: the air through it. And therefore sure, yeah, yeah, kind
Speaker 1: of cool. Nine Henry Sieben he attempts a different approach.
Speaker 1: His patent has a closed dryer that is more like
Speaker 1: a heated cabinet with wire shelving inside it. So imagine
Speaker 1: that you have like a little like cabinet or closet
Speaker 1: and it's got wire shelves, and you put the clothes
Speaker 1: on the shelves, and then you have an electric fan
Speaker 1: that draws air through the machine, which allowed for faster drying. Now,
Speaker 1: he didn't specifically include an element that with heat air,
Speaker 1: but you would presumably have this near some sort of
Speaker 1: other device that would heat the air, like a stove.
Speaker 1: So this cabinet would just pull the air through, which
Speaker 1: would circulate through the clothes, so kind of similar to
Speaker 1: Seward H. Davis's approach of tumbling, but they're stationary, so
Speaker 1: it's just pulling the air. So again this another idea
Speaker 1: that becomes important in uh in modern day dryers. So
Speaker 1: the important thing to remember here is the fan that
Speaker 1: holes the air through. These are all various elements, the
Speaker 1: tumbler pulling the air through. These are all things that
Speaker 1: are going to come into play with the modern day dryers.
Speaker 1: Now you still had to preheat the air though with
Speaker 1: something like a stove. Then we get to nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 1: Now here's the guy that most people credit as Yeah,
Speaker 1: although again the citations different from what I was able
Speaker 1: to find. Okay, see, because he filed for a patent
Speaker 1: in ninety seven, this is James are more James right?
Speaker 1: Thank you? Um, it wasn't granted until, which we suspect
Speaker 1: World War two probably had something to do, had other
Speaker 1: stuff on their minds, right, the patent office was probably drafted.
Speaker 1: Uh So yeah, seven is the filing and is the
Speaker 1: awarding makes perfect sense. But it was for a closed
Speaker 1: drying machine. And this is the basis for closed dryers
Speaker 1: as we now know them. And so he what he
Speaker 1: did was he added applying heated air that didn't need
Speaker 1: to be preheated in an oven. He wanted to have
Speaker 1: a heating element either a gas hour or electric and
Speaker 1: in fact would eventually create both types. Right. He He
Speaker 1: also created a ventilation system so that air can can
Speaker 1: move through the dryer and then exhaust out of it,
Speaker 1: carrying that water vapor out. So you see, this is
Speaker 1: the combination of that rotating drum and that idea of
Speaker 1: the cabin exactly. So by combining the two, he has
Speaker 1: the best approach. And in fact, you could tell us
Speaker 1: the best approach because it's the one that lasted the
Speaker 1: test of time. So yeah, he uh as often cited
Speaker 1: in a lot of the websites we saw as having
Speaker 1: patented this this approach as early as nineteen thirty. But
Speaker 1: I went to the patent office, I mean online to
Speaker 1: the patent office. He didn't like, you didn't go there.
Speaker 1: I didn't actually take a trip to the patent office.
Speaker 1: I think they probably would have thrown the out of
Speaker 1: the patent off. They were like, how did you find
Speaker 1: your way in here? And I was like, I'd like
Speaker 1: to see your archives from nineteen thirty. Yeah, that probably
Speaker 1: would not have gone over. Well, they said, you've heard
Speaker 1: of the internet, right, Well, you can actually do searches
Speaker 1: online on the patent office. Google has a great patent
Speaker 1: search function, but you can also go to the U
Speaker 1: S Patent Office and use their search function. I use
Speaker 1: both because I could not find it in one, so
Speaker 1: I wanted to try both versions. You need to find
Speaker 1: a keywords pretty pretty acutely. Yeah, but it but it's
Speaker 1: it's a little more forgiving. But with the US one
Speaker 1: you can find everything listed in chronological order, whereas with
Speaker 1: Google you get it by order of relevance to your query.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you might see the first one
Speaker 1: pop up and say nineteen forty five, and the next
Speaker 1: one says nineteen twenty seven, and the next one says
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, and you're like, oh man, it's gonna
Speaker 1: take forever to find the oldest one. U S Patent
Speaker 1: does it chronologically, with the oldest being the last on
Speaker 1: the list. I went through both. The earliest I can
Speaker 1: find was nineteen thirty seven as a filing date, let
Speaker 1: alone a patent granted date, So I have no idea
Speaker 1: where they pulled this date of nineteen thirty They also
Speaker 1: said that he sold the patent in nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: but he didn't even file for a pat until nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven. I don't know where you get your informa
Speaker 1: Asian Internet, so you should check it more carefully. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So anyway, he did file in nineteen thirty seven, and
Speaker 1: he did end up working with another company in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight. That company would be the Hamilton's Manufacturing Company
Speaker 1: located in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, Pride and Joy of Wisconsin
Speaker 1: of Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Anyway, they actually have a museum
Speaker 1: dedicated to this former manufacturing company, and they used James R.
Speaker 1: Moore's design. They actually paid him for this, and they
Speaker 1: released in ninety eight the June Day Clothes Dryer based
Speaker 1: off this design. The early models used gas for heat
Speaker 1: to heat the heating element, so you'd have to like
Speaker 1: light the pilot light every time you wanted to dry
Speaker 1: a load of laundry, and then once you were done
Speaker 1: drying that load of laundry, should probably remember to blow
Speaker 1: it out. Yeah, you had to extinguish it or else
Speaker 1: you would just be wasting lots of gas or possibly
Speaker 1: creating a fire hazard, which, by the way, dryers big
Speaker 1: fire hazards. In general, do not run your dryer and
Speaker 1: then leave the house just in case. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't want to scare anybody, but it is, but lint
Speaker 1: fires can happen. Yeah, so just a little word of
Speaker 1: caution in the middle of the episode. But yeah, later
Speaker 1: models were electric and they still created the gas ones too,
Speaker 1: but manufacturing was interrupted shortly after they started. They produced
Speaker 1: about six thousand of them and then stopped suddenly, all
Speaker 1: because of the event we have already referenced in this podcast,
Speaker 1: afore mentioned World War too. Yep, so World War two
Speaker 1: causes a manufacturer to stop. This was the case across
Speaker 1: multiple industries because yeah, the war effort needed all that
Speaker 1: material and and labor and a lot of the factory space. Yes,
Speaker 1: so all of that meant that dryers were not seen
Speaker 1: as being important to the war effort. It was put
Speaker 1: on hold. World War two was was over and the
Speaker 1: Hamilton's Manufacturing Company got back into this, but they were
Speaker 1: no longer the only game in town. By this time.
Speaker 1: Another big company, much bigger than Hamilton's Manufacturing actually got
Speaker 1: into the closed dryer game, and that would be General Electric.
Speaker 1: And so then it was off to the races, but
Speaker 1: but not not fast races and not not cheap races, no,
Speaker 1: incredibly expensive races, very very slow, expensive races. Around the
Speaker 1: same time, the first electric dryer to include a glass
Speaker 1: window in the front was introduced. And this is a
Speaker 1: design element, you know, it's it's it's just kind of
Speaker 1: nice to look at. But I wanted to mention it
Speaker 1: because it was designed by Brooks Stevens, who's another wisconsinite.
Speaker 1: He was a Wisconsin designer who also worked in in architecture, furniture,
Speaker 1: and auto design, including that greatest car of all, the
Speaker 1: Oscar Meyer Weenomobile. Man truly a visionary. We could do
Speaker 1: a full episode just on that. Actually I should mention
Speaker 1: all the inventors we've talked about have done some pretty
Speaker 1: phenomenal things besides inventing dryers. So but this, I mean,
Speaker 1: no one approached creating the Auscar Meer Wiener mobile aso.
Speaker 1: You know, we won't go back and fill those out
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty s. Well, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Speaker 1: a dryer in the mid nineteen fifties cost about two
Speaker 1: thirty dollars, which if you adjust for inflation, would be
Speaker 1: closer to two thousand dollars for a dryer. Yes, so
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of people could afford it. On um.
Speaker 1: I shall also point out that this same paper cited
Speaker 1: some of the erroneous sources that I mentioned earlier. Um,
Speaker 1: the ones that could not be supported by, say, the
Speaker 1: Patent Office. I guess the Bureau of Labor Statistics in
Speaker 1: the patent offices don't don't talk to each other frequently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this inner departmental stress type thing. This was I had
Speaker 1: to include it. I mean, there are some crazy patents
Speaker 1: out there, y'all. If you if you ever have a
Speaker 1: really slow day and you just want to amuse yourself,
Speaker 1: just start typing random words into a Google patent search
Speaker 1: and then enjoy. But one of the crazy ones I
Speaker 1: found was filed by William C. Sholin and the title
Speaker 1: of the patent is hair drying attachment for clothes dryer.
Speaker 1: This this cannot be what I think it is. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: if you think it's you're putting your hair in a
Speaker 1: clothes dryer, it's not. But if you think it's a
Speaker 1: tube connected to your clothes dryer that's used as a
Speaker 1: hair dryer, it totally is. It's a tube using the
Speaker 1: heat from the the dryer. I guess, I guess. You know,
Speaker 1: it's good to conserve energy, and so if you're already
Speaker 1: creating that heat, you might as well, yeah, dryer your hair,
Speaker 1: even though even though you're mostly using steam at that point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the hair dryer. It's one of those where it's
Speaker 1: got like the whole thing that comes of the fad,
Speaker 1: the helmet. Yeah, I have no idea what those are called.
Speaker 1: My hair days are long over, but anyway, it would
Speaker 1: fit over the person's head and uh, and presumably dry
Speaker 1: it using the heat from the hair dryer. Um. I
Speaker 1: don't know how popular this invention was if it were
Speaker 1: ever actually uh, you know, built because just because something's
Speaker 1: patented doesn't mean that you're going to have real examples
Speaker 1: of it. But if you want to look this up,
Speaker 1: I got a treat for you. Here's the patent number.
Speaker 1: You can put into a search, three million, sixty four thousand,
Speaker 1: three hundred sixty and you can look at the illustrations.
Speaker 1: Depending upon the patent search you put in, you may
Speaker 1: or may not need to use the commas in that number.
Speaker 1: You just could put in the digits three zero six
Speaker 1: four zero. It's entertaining, but obviously I can't really show
Speaker 1: it on an audio podcast at any rate. In Um,
Speaker 1: a vacuum chamber related dryer was proposed. Yeah, William Lambert
Speaker 1: Chanley filed a patent for a drayer that would use
Speaker 1: a vacuum chamber. And this makes sense when you think
Speaker 1: about it, in the sense that in a vacuum, it
Speaker 1: takes less heat to evaporate water. Yeah, so if you're
Speaker 1: able to create a partial vacuum. We're not talking like
Speaker 1: a complete vacuum, but if you were able to create
Speaker 1: a partial vacuum within a dryer, then you could pressure
Speaker 1: and yeah, you don't have to heat up the air
Speaker 1: as much, so you don't have to pourse my energy
Speaker 1: in it. As we'll talk about a little bit later,
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of energy to power a dryer.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's one of the most energy hungry appliances
Speaker 1: that typical house has, so this will be a way
Speaker 1: of reducing that. Also, Channeling maintained that the high quote
Speaker 1: unquote roasting temperatures of clothes dryers and the fast rotation
Speaker 1: of the drum meant that clothing was being damaged and
Speaker 1: turned into lent, and that his invention would appeal to
Speaker 1: people who wanted to get a more gentle drying of
Speaker 1: their clothing. It wouldn't require as much rigor. Now this
Speaker 1: particular approach has been experimented with a few times, but
Speaker 1: it's tough to make a chamber that is a partial vacuum,
Speaker 1: particularly if you need to have an exhaust to the
Speaker 1: outside to get rid of steam. Then you can't really
Speaker 1: make a vacuum without crazy valves and then having a
Speaker 1: venting time as well as a vacuum time, and and
Speaker 1: and and more energy being put in even than a
Speaker 1: regular dryer. Yeah, you can't. You obviously can't keep introducing
Speaker 1: hot air into such a thing because then you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have a vacuum. So it's it's one of those that
Speaker 1: was an interesting idea, but no one i think, has
Speaker 1: really found a way of implementing it where it really
Speaker 1: made sense. Plus it it makes it you know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to make a partial vacuum. It means they would
Speaker 1: make it more expensive. Yeah, they are working. NASA is
Speaker 1: funding someone to work on something related to that. But
Speaker 1: I'll talk about that way at the end of the podcast. Excellent,
Speaker 1: there's a little teaser for you. So in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: again going back to our friends at the Bureau of
Speaker 1: Labor Statistics while they're not talking to the patent office.
Speaker 1: The price of a dryer was closer to a hundred
Speaker 1: ninety dollars, which in today's money is closer to a
Speaker 1: grand so half the expense of what it was in
Speaker 1: the nineteen yeah and about forty of all households had one.
Speaker 1: So when we get up to nineteen seven, the unit
Speaker 1: price is about three hundred forty dollars. So remember it
Speaker 1: was a hundred ninety dollars in nineteen seventies, three forty
Speaker 1: ninety seven, and you think, oh, what the heck the
Speaker 1: price went up. It didn't go down well, except that
Speaker 1: when you adjust for inflation from nine seven, it's still
Speaker 1: pretty close to three and forty dollars. So the value
Speaker 1: has of that money has increased, the buying power has
Speaker 1: increased um for that amount for three dollars, so you
Speaker 1: don't so it's actually cheaper in the long run. Um
Speaker 1: and of households owned a dryer by this time. That
Speaker 1: same year, over in Europe, a manufacturer called Electrolux would
Speaker 1: develop an energy efficient type of machine, the heat pump
Speaker 1: or hydraulic dryer. Over the next couple of years, UM
Speaker 1: that they had gained market share kind of slowly but
Speaker 1: surely over in Europe and also in Australia, although they
Speaker 1: have not caught on yet in the United States. UM.
Speaker 1: More on how those work later on. But but they're
Speaker 1: pretty cool. They use some like forty ft of the
Speaker 1: amount of energy the traditional dryers do, so that's that's
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. Yeah, and now we're getting up to just
Speaker 1: about today, right yeah. Okay, So so every year Energy Star,
Speaker 1: which is a program within the e p A, the
Speaker 1: the US Environmental Protection Agency, UM, they announced an area
Speaker 1: of technology that's deserving of what they call an Emerging
Speaker 1: Technology Award, and in it was advance clothes dryers UM,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. According to Consumer Reports, dryer's account for
Speaker 1: some six percent of US home energy use, which accounts
Speaker 1: for for three or more per year, which is think
Speaker 1: about this. You aren't running your dryer constantly. Your run
Speaker 1: your dryer occasionally when you have to do laundry, and
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily have to do laundry every single day.
Speaker 1: So if you're talking about an appliance that you only
Speaker 1: use occasionally and it makes up six percent of your energy,
Speaker 1: that's that's incredible. Yeah. Yeah, it means that you know,
Speaker 1: really small innovations could make for pretty huge savings and
Speaker 1: in terms of both money and you know, overall carbon footprints. Um. So.
Speaker 1: So the e P A specifically or energy star I
Speaker 1: guess I should say specifically called out a Samsung model
Speaker 1: uh named Cleverly DV for rolls off the tongue does
Speaker 1: um uh that it estimates could save enough energy to
Speaker 1: run an efficient clothing washer for eleven months um and
Speaker 1: also has an integrated smart system for monitoring your clothes
Speaker 1: remotely via app Yo dog, your shirt is dry? Uh, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean you're you're you're joking, But there
Speaker 1: are sensors in these new kinds of dryers that will
Speaker 1: test moisture in your clothing. They can shut off automatically
Speaker 1: when your clothes are dry. That that was one of
Speaker 1: the one of the specific considerations for this award. It
Speaker 1: had to the dryers they were looking at had to
Speaker 1: contain at least two types of sensors for determining when
Speaker 1: your clothes are dry. And just that way, you cut
Speaker 1: off the cycle. Yeah, you don't have it continuing for
Speaker 1: some predetermined amount of time when the clothes are already dry.
Speaker 1: There's no need to keep it going. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: just wasting energy and shrinking clothes unless you're strapped for entertainment,
Speaker 1: and that's just you know, you're just sitting there watching
Speaker 1: the clothes tumble, in which case, Hi, dr horrible. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, we got a lot more to say. Specifically,
Speaker 1: we're going to cover how these things are actually working.
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. Okay, So now we're back
Speaker 1: with ratists specifically dig into how Ryer's work, and we've
Speaker 1: kind of mentioned a lot of the elements already. You've
Speaker 1: got a typical clothes dryer, so we're talking about just
Speaker 1: your basic model that, yeah, most of mostly in the
Speaker 1: United States, is the type you're going to run into.
Speaker 1: UM has a rotating tumbler. So that's your drum that
Speaker 1: rotates around and around and the clothes tumble within it.
Speaker 1: You've got some kind of heating element to heat air,
Speaker 1: which is then somehow drawn through that tumbler, right, So
Speaker 1: you probably have holes in the tumbler to allow air
Speaker 1: to pass through, and then you've got an exhaust pipe
Speaker 1: of some sort so you can vent out that the
Speaker 1: warm humid air. Yeah, because no, you don't want to
Speaker 1: keep the steam in there. It's just gonna make the
Speaker 1: clothes take even longer to dry. So by venting it
Speaker 1: out and constantly replacing it with dry, warm air, you're
Speaker 1: gonna end up, you know, drying a much faster. You
Speaker 1: just vent out all the steam. So let's start talking
Speaker 1: about all these various elements and how they work together.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the fans. Yeah, yeah, let's start. Let's
Speaker 1: start at the end. Yeah, the because the end is
Speaker 1: the beginning. The beginning is the end. It is the
Speaker 1: alpha and the omega of d it's a flat circle. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. We didn't mean to get all philosophical, but
Speaker 1: it is pretty late on a Thursday afternoon, guys, and
Speaker 1: things get weird. So the fan is located at the
Speaker 1: exhaust end of the dryer. It's not at the very
Speaker 1: front of the dryer's at the very end of it.
Speaker 1: But it ends up when it turns pulling air in
Speaker 1: from the dryer and exhausting it out the exhaust vent.
Speaker 1: That's the direction of air flow, so it's not blowing
Speaker 1: air in, it's essentially pulling air out of it. So
Speaker 1: that means you kind of have some place for air
Speaker 1: to come into the dryer or else it is trying
Speaker 1: to create a vacuum, right, which is less effective. That's
Speaker 1: less effective. Yeah, if you just have a heating element
Speaker 1: and you create a vacuum, then you've got a hot
Speaker 1: spot in your in your dryer and no air inside
Speaker 1: the tumbler, and that's not going to help. So these
Speaker 1: dryers have vents or holes that are in them that
Speaker 1: allow air to pass into the actual dryer and and
Speaker 1: be pulled in. Yeah, pulled in and then passed over
Speaker 1: a heating element, which, as we mentioned before, is either
Speaker 1: powered by gas or electric power. So this heating element, um,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in just a second, but that's
Speaker 1: what's creating the increase in temperature in the air, which
Speaker 1: will then, once it is warm, continue into the tumbler
Speaker 1: where the clothes are. Yeah, I mean, if you've loaded
Speaker 1: your dryer correctly where the clothes should be exactly. If
Speaker 1: the clothes are not in there, you've done something very wrong,
Speaker 1: you know, and we've made some assumptions and we apologize,
Speaker 1: but no, you put the clothes in the tumbler, that's
Speaker 1: where the warm air goes into. Next, it passes into
Speaker 1: the door area. That's where the lent screen. The air,
Speaker 1: not the clothes. Yes, the air. Yes, if you close
Speaker 1: are passing through the door area, you have not replaced
Speaker 1: the lent screen, and you should do that. So the
Speaker 1: LN screen is there obviously to capture lent from clothing
Speaker 1: so it doesn't end up clogging up the rest of
Speaker 1: the system. But that's where the airflow goes to next.
Speaker 1: So it's coming in through these venting areas into the
Speaker 1: tumbler out through the door venting area. Pulled passes through
Speaker 1: the fan because that the next stop is where the
Speaker 1: fan is, and then the fan blows it out the
Speaker 1: exhaust area, which usually you have some sort of weird
Speaker 1: that that tubing stuff, you know, the tubing stuff that
Speaker 1: you can cut in half and then you can have
Speaker 1: robot arms. My cosplay is different from your cosplay. That
Speaker 1: is accurate. I have a video that proves that. So
Speaker 1: that's your basic airflow, and that is the secret to
Speaker 1: drying the clothes is that introducing this dry warm air,
Speaker 1: possibly dry hot air. It all depends upon the mode
Speaker 1: you've set it on. We'll talk about that in the
Speaker 1: second certainly. Okay, so let's talk about how it gets
Speaker 1: warm or hot. What is this heating element? Like, Okay,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen a toaster and you know when
Speaker 1: you when you we're not talking about cylons, right, No, No,
Speaker 1: I mean no, because I've seen those two. We don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about the cylons because they might show up. No,
Speaker 1: we're talking about toaster toaster, So we're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: you put a put a piece of bread in a
Speaker 1: toaster and you set it down. Then you see those
Speaker 1: little wires turn red hot. That's essentially what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: SAME's of a a heating element, it's without of nichrome wire.
Speaker 1: So what you're doing is you're passing a current through
Speaker 1: this wire. The wire has a resistance to current. Resistance
Speaker 1: means that quite a lot of resistance. Actually yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: it's sort of the opposite of what you want to
Speaker 1: do in any kind of electronic wire technology, where you're
Speaker 1: trying to insulate it so much that that it has
Speaker 1: as low of a resistance as possible. Right. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: with low resistance you make it really really efficient, right,
Speaker 1: you're not losing energy to heat. But in this case,
Speaker 1: what you want to do is generate heat, is lose
Speaker 1: as much energy to heat as possible because that's the
Speaker 1: kind of energy. One is the heat energy. You're not
Speaker 1: interested in passing electricity on to some other points. So
Speaker 1: in this case, this electricity gets converted into heat due
Speaker 1: to that electrical resistance. And this is the element of
Speaker 1: the dryer that consumes the most power that the rotating
Speaker 1: drum not even close, the fan not even close. It's
Speaker 1: this heating element. So a typical dryer is pulling in
Speaker 1: like four thousand to six thousand watts. That's a lot. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now we've got the tumbler. Uh, it's it's a really
Speaker 1: simple pulley system. Actually, you know, you got a motor,
Speaker 1: the motor, electric motor or gas powered motor. A belt
Speaker 1: attaches from the motor to the tumbler, and the motor turns.
Speaker 1: That ends up turning the belt, which ends up turning
Speaker 1: the tumbler. It's pretty it's one of the simplest machines ever. Actually.
Speaker 1: The policy system, so yeah, usually you have to have
Speaker 1: maybe you know, two pulleys that are involved. One is
Speaker 1: creating tension on the other so that it stays in place,
Speaker 1: because obviously, like if it slips a belt, that's when
Speaker 1: you're starting to get this weird noise. And your dryer
Speaker 1: is not gonna be turning properly, and then you need
Speaker 1: to shut things down before your motor burns out. But
Speaker 1: assuming everything's working fine, it's just gonna turn the tumbler. Next.
Speaker 1: We have the controls. So we have two different types
Speaker 1: of controls. Right. The modern dryers you would buy in
Speaker 1: an appliance store today, most of them have digital controls,
Speaker 1: which involves having a micro controller. But if you're going
Speaker 1: with an old dryer, let's say like the kind of
Speaker 1: dryer I grew up with where it had like a
Speaker 1: dial and buttons. Yeah, you punch the button saying okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do permanent press, and you push the
Speaker 1: permanent press button and it and it clicks in and
Speaker 1: then you would turn the dial to the right setting
Speaker 1: and then uh, it would be possessed and start rumbling.
Speaker 1: And that's because there would be a series of of
Speaker 1: gears and cams. So and it worked a little bit
Speaker 1: like a like an egg timer. Yeah, yeah, kind of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have like a you have you can you have
Speaker 1: a physical capacity that that when it ran out, it
Speaker 1: would it would cause a shot off valve, a shot
Speaker 1: off circuit disconnect. Yeah, because with the cam you can
Speaker 1: think of it as like, think of it like a
Speaker 1: metal key, and when the metal key makes contact with
Speaker 1: a contact point, it completes a circuit. Right, So when
Speaker 1: the circuits complete, electricity can flow. And then as long
Speaker 1: as that that key is making contact with the contact point,
Speaker 1: it'll stay in place. The electricity will continue to flow.
Speaker 1: But at the time or when the timer comes out,
Speaker 1: a mechanical piece will push the key out of the way,
Speaker 1: breaking the circuit and thus the dryer. Yeah, so we're
Speaker 1: talking about programming something through actual phizz iCal moving pieces,
Speaker 1: mechanical pieces, but it's it's doing the same source of
Speaker 1: stuff that digital controller is doing digitally, it's just doing
Speaker 1: it all mechanically and with electronic pieces. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of exciting stuff. Like if you ever were to
Speaker 1: take one of these apart, first of all, I hope
Speaker 1: you don't need it afterward, because if you do anything,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're anything like us, you're not going
Speaker 1: to get that back together. No. No, we might be
Speaker 1: able to put something back together, but it ain't gonna work.
Speaker 1: Let's just put it that way. It'll look really interesting though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you could actually see that there are all these
Speaker 1: little moving parts that need to come into play so
Speaker 1: that they touch these contact points and create these circuits.
Speaker 1: They also usually have In fact, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: dryers are required to have temperature shut off switches. And
Speaker 1: these aren't to measure the temperature of your clothing, but
Speaker 1: the the temperature of the overall unit, so that if
Speaker 1: it gets too warm, um, and is in danger of
Speaker 1: melting down the motor or any of the other operative
Speaker 1: parts or causing a fire. Causing a fire, it can
Speaker 1: shut down. Yeah, It'll just break that contact and you
Speaker 1: will lose the circuit, and thus the dryer will shut down. UM.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's kind of a fail safe there.
Speaker 1: And uh, some of them, like we said, have the
Speaker 1: humidity sensors, so they can actually measure how much humidity
Speaker 1: is within the dryer and if it reaches below a
Speaker 1: certain threshold, then the dryer will shut off because your
Speaker 1: clothes are dry, so that doesn't have to continue to
Speaker 1: operate and thus consume more energy. Now, there are other
Speaker 1: types of clothes dryers out there. That's the basic type,
Speaker 1: that's the one that's the most common United States. But
Speaker 1: like you were saying, Lauren, it's not the only kind
Speaker 1: out there. One of them is called a condensing clothes dryer.
Speaker 1: So these don't have a vent to exhaust steam. They
Speaker 1: don't have that fan pulling the air through inventing it out. Instead,
Speaker 1: these dryers allow water to condense and then collect, either
Speaker 1: draining into a collection pan or tank, or more likely
Speaker 1: draining into the house water waste system. So if you
Speaker 1: have a washer dryer combo, something that can act is
Speaker 1: both washer and a dryer, it's usually this type of dryer.
Speaker 1: It's a condenser dryer more often than not. Uh, And
Speaker 1: so putting an exhaust on a washer that would be
Speaker 1: really not good. Yeah, I mean you've got like the
Speaker 1: wastewater exhaust. But if you had just a pipe that
Speaker 1: was supposed to allow air to go through, water would
Speaker 1: go through that too. Yeah yeah so yeah, which would
Speaker 1: make it an inefficient washer. So yeah, then you have
Speaker 1: the heat pump dryers, like you were saying, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: these these have a these have just just a normal
Speaker 1: old heat pump. I mean, I mean the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that we were talking about in in in our
Speaker 1: refrigerator episode. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's a heat exchanger. You've
Speaker 1: got a hot side and a cold side, so the
Speaker 1: cold side is really important because you've got that hot,
Speaker 1: steamy air and when you have hot steamy air meat
Speaker 1: a cold service, that's when you have water condensing, and
Speaker 1: then that condensed water can then flow into a pan
Speaker 1: or a drain, just like in the condenser style. The
Speaker 1: warm side of the heat pomp can reheat the air
Speaker 1: inside the dryer. So as the dryer air is losing
Speaker 1: energy because it's encountering that wet water and causing it
Speaker 1: to evaporate, that means that the air temperatures to go down.
Speaker 1: But this heat pomp continues that cycle, so the cold
Speaker 1: side is removing the water, the hot side is increasing
Speaker 1: the temperature, so you can have a more efficient means
Speaker 1: of drying out the clothes inside. So again, no need
Speaker 1: to exhaust unless which is great because if you don't
Speaker 1: have to exhaust this thing, like by exhaust, I mean
Speaker 1: you don't have to have a pipe where the exhaust
Speaker 1: air flows through. There's no need for that in this model,
Speaker 1: and that's great because when you have an exhaust pipe
Speaker 1: that's open to the environment, that means that you're losing
Speaker 1: some of the heat that you want to put inside
Speaker 1: the clothes just going out the exhaust pipe. Oh sure, sure,
Speaker 1: and you're you're losing through that exhaust pipe that heat
Speaker 1: out into your house, which, for example, during the summer months,
Speaker 1: can make you run your acemore more intensely. Yeah. So, uh,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a domino effect, right, So then we
Speaker 1: can talk a little bit about these future dryers. One
Speaker 1: of the which one of the ones that you mentioned.
Speaker 1: So first of all, there was an idea back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties to try and use microwaves as a
Speaker 1: as a means of drying clothes, So you would make
Speaker 1: a special old dryer would be a microwave dryer. Supposedly
Speaker 1: there are some of these in Japan, but I've never
Speaker 1: seen like an actual source source about it. But the
Speaker 1: real problem with this is arcing. So arcing is when
Speaker 1: you get these little plasma forms. If you've ever accidentally
Speaker 1: put something metal in a microwave, and here's where I
Speaker 1: tell you do not put metal in a mica that's
Speaker 1: very bad. But if you've ever accidentally done it, then
Speaker 1: you might have seen arking where you see these little
Speaker 1: plasmas lightning bolts. Yeah, or if you've ever had one
Speaker 1: of those plasma balls where you put your fingers on it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like that too. In fact, it is like,
Speaker 1: that's what's happening. Um, it's not good for your microwave
Speaker 1: in general. I used to have a microwave that had
Speaker 1: a special stand that came with the microwave. Okay, that
Speaker 1: was meant for popcorn, Like you put a bag of
Speaker 1: microwave popcorn on it, and it would elevate the popcorn
Speaker 1: so that it would have more uniform heating. Despite the
Speaker 1: fact that this came with the microwave, which I would
Speaker 1: assume means it's say, to put in the microwave, it
Speaker 1: would occasionally mark. Not all the time, but sometimes you
Speaker 1: would get a mark, and I would think, I do
Speaker 1: not want microup microwave popcorn that badly. Yeah, that's vaguely terrifying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, if you were to put stuff that's like
Speaker 1: if you had metal stuff in your clothes, either like
Speaker 1: change or zippers or yeah, or buttons or other clasps
Speaker 1: things that are metal, then that could possibly cause this
Speaker 1: arcing problem which could damage clothing. And in fact, that's
Speaker 1: the main reason we haven't really seen it implemented. There
Speaker 1: have been other people who have tested it, and there's
Speaker 1: still people who are thinking that there might be a
Speaker 1: way of doing this in a in a in a
Speaker 1: manner that's not going to make your clothes burn up
Speaker 1: or right right, which is really the purpose of me
Speaker 1: drying my clothes. I don't know about everybody else. Well,
Speaker 1: there are occasionally shirts where I'm like, no, never mind,
Speaker 1: we'll see step one for me, as I want to
Speaker 1: get my clothes dry, but step two is I do
Speaker 1: not want to burn holes in them. Yes, but okay,
Speaker 1: So as unlikely as it sounds that this could be
Speaker 1: a really viable plan. This, this is the kind of
Speaker 1: system that that NASA has granted some some money too.
Speaker 1: They granted one company specifically called Umqua all in capital
Speaker 1: letters because why not, ye it's spelled exactly the way
Speaker 1: it sounds. They granted them some funding through their Small
Speaker 1: Business Innovative Research Program back in Tleven and um that
Speaker 1: the system that UMA is working on the last time
Speaker 1: I checked, involves ceiling clothes in in a vacuum bag
Speaker 1: and um cleaning them by jetting water and soap through
Speaker 1: the bag and then drying them via microwave radiation and
Speaker 1: then furthermore making them all soft and cuddly with jets
Speaker 1: of air. Interesting, so You've got a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: things in there that are are similar to approaches that
Speaker 1: were considered failures. Yeah, so maybe this could be a
Speaker 1: terrific failure in space. Space. In space, nobody can clean
Speaker 1: your underwear. It's a problem. I mean yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean you either you either have to bring infinite
Speaker 1: changes of underpants with you, right, which, try and get
Speaker 1: that through customs, right right, I mean, and it's really
Speaker 1: expensive to bring stuff into space. You don't want to
Speaker 1: do that, I mean you you want to be able
Speaker 1: to wash him. Everyone wants to clean underwear. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that is very and if you don't, you should. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're not judging. We're just I'm judging. Okay, we're judging
Speaker 1: a little all right. So anyway, that wraps up this
Speaker 1: discussion about clothes dryers. I hope that Thomas enjoyed this episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: we've already received a request for what will eventually become
Speaker 1: the third part of our series of cleaning clothing. Who knew?
Speaker 1: H Yeah, dry cleaning. Yeah, dry cleaning will be the
Speaker 1: next one we tackle. Obviously, it will not be the
Speaker 1: next episode. Now we'll figure out. Gonna give it a
Speaker 1: break for a little minute. You know, we gave it
Speaker 1: a couple of months for for washing clothes and dryers,
Speaker 1: so the same sort of thing is going to apply
Speaker 1: at least so but we will get around to it.
Speaker 1: If you have a request, whether it's clothing related or
Speaker 1: something completely unrelated the clothing but still related to technology
Speaker 1: and you want to learn more about it, let us know.
Speaker 1: Will take that burden of responsibility off your shoulders and
Speaker 1: we'll carry it proudly into the future. Just send us
Speaker 1: an email or at least into a microphone or at
Speaker 1: least into a microphone. Yeah, send us an email the
Speaker 1: addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook, Tumbler, or Twitter or handle at
Speaker 1: all three is tech stuff h s W and we
Speaker 1: will talk to you again. Releasing for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it has stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com