Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Focalum, and today we
Speaker 1: have an episode brought to you courtesy of Thomas f
Speaker 1: via Facebook, who has asked us this question. Hey, guys
Speaker 1: and gals at tech Stuff. It's just really the two
Speaker 1: guys in the moring down an old guy. But okay, whatever,
Speaker 1: I've wondered about some things for a while, and maybe
Speaker 1: it's a possibility for episodes, or maybe I'll just get
Speaker 1: answers right here on the site. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I'll throw them out there. How washing machines and dryers work.
Speaker 1: I find it fascinating how it can warm up the
Speaker 1: water and temperate itself. The same with the dryer. Where
Speaker 1: and how does it create this heat? And is it
Speaker 1: a lot of heat? So we really decided that we
Speaker 1: were going to split these up, so right now we're
Speaker 1: just going to talk about washing machines because if we
Speaker 1: try to do with washers and dryers, we'd have to
Speaker 1: kind of gloss over everything. Yeah, I believe it or not,
Speaker 1: this is a really interesting and complicated topic, as as
Speaker 1: per everything that we go into going like we'll pick
Speaker 1: that one because it'll be nice and simple, it'll be short.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that we often look at these
Speaker 1: and like, well, we'll be able to explain how it works,
Speaker 1: but it's not going to be a very good episode.
Speaker 1: And then as we start to do research, like, hey,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other stuff we can really really
Speaker 1: is interesting that ties directly into this, and both of
Speaker 1: us like talking a whole lot. So you guys when yeah,
Speaker 1: so all right, Lauren, yes, Jonathan. Have you ever had
Speaker 1: to clean any of your clothes without the benefit of
Speaker 1: a machine to do it for you? Actually sinkwash a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. It takes some effort, doesn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sucks. Yeah, it's not fun. It is not a
Speaker 1: fun thing to do. It is the opposite of fun.
Speaker 1: I have also done this. I Lauren and I have
Speaker 1: both in the past, not together, Warren costumes for various occasions,
Speaker 1: like you know, it's Thursday, Yeah, and so Thursday is
Speaker 1: my favorite someday. Some costumes you just they're not washing
Speaker 1: machines safe. They're delicate. Yeah, so you got a kind
Speaker 1: of not so delicate that you don't have to put
Speaker 1: in a ton of effort to get them clean. Though.
Speaker 1: So here's how washingtons to work. You get some water,
Speaker 1: you put some soiled clothing in the water. Then you
Speaker 1: agitate the soiled clothing. And I don't mean you say
Speaker 1: nasty things about its mother. You actually have to physically
Speaker 1: move that clothing around in order to shake loose the dirt.
Speaker 1: If you really want to say nasty things about its mother.
Speaker 1: I mean, it pretty much naturally happens. It's not going
Speaker 1: to hurt. Yeah, it might actually make you feel better
Speaker 1: as you're as you're scrubbing up to your elbows, make
Speaker 1: your roommates think you're really weird. That ship sailed a
Speaker 1: long time ago. So yeah, you have to put in
Speaker 1: all this this physical work to kind of shake loose
Speaker 1: the dirt, and then you take the water away, You
Speaker 1: take the clothes away from the water, You take the
Speaker 1: water away from the clothes. However you do it, and
Speaker 1: then you rense it off, and then you try and
Speaker 1: wring it out, and then you hang it up to
Speaker 1: dry or however you want to dry it. So what
Speaker 1: we needed to do was find a way of making
Speaker 1: this process. It used to be that that used to
Speaker 1: be the way we cleaned everything didn't matter if it
Speaker 1: was delicate or not. We need to find a way
Speaker 1: to make that less of a chore. So we want
Speaker 1: to talk about the history of washing machines as well
Speaker 1: as how they worked. And to begin with, the history
Speaker 1: is not all that clear because, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: a lot of people just didn't really bother, you know,
Speaker 1: recording all the developments in washing machine technology. Well, the
Speaker 1: thing is that most of the time the washing was
Speaker 1: being done by um, by people in the lower classes
Speaker 1: who were not also writing scientific papers about advancements in
Speaker 1: this kind of text. So so there's there's a whole
Speaker 1: lot of disagreement on when stuff happened, where it happened, um,
Speaker 1: what the terminology was, because the terminology varied from like
Speaker 1: town to town. Yeah, yeah, whether or not you had
Speaker 1: a stomp bucket or not. Yeah. Like, there's some great
Speaker 1: terms that we're going to talk about here. But so
Speaker 1: excited we're going to We're gonna do our best to
Speaker 1: wade through the confusion and lead you to the other
Speaker 1: side where the light will be seen by all and
Speaker 1: we'll have clean clothes there. That's my goal. So first,
Speaker 1: we're gonna start with ancient Rome, because this has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with washing machines, but it was so cool
Speaker 1: I had to bring it in. So the ancient Romans
Speaker 1: were among the earliest people's to offer public laundry services.
Speaker 1: They had an entire class of people who whose job
Speaker 1: it was to clean clothes. And those those people were dudes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were dudes. This was this was men's work because
Speaker 1: it was heavy duty, hard work. You see, back in
Speaker 1: Roman times, all the clothing was made out of wool. Wool,
Speaker 1: that's heavy. Yeah, cotton didn't exist yet. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've been to Italy or various other
Speaker 1: regions that were part of the Roman Empire, it's warm,
Speaker 1: you know, and people people get a little uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a little little sweaty lit little stinky, little stinky, and
Speaker 1: so you need to clean those clothings. So they had
Speaker 1: these people, these men called foulon is now Fulons were
Speaker 1: the They were the in charge of cleaning the clothes.
Speaker 1: You would pay them and they would take the clothes.
Speaker 1: They put them in a vat. It would be a
Speaker 1: vat that you know, go up to like say the
Speaker 1: waster so has some water in it, and then they'd
Speaker 1: stomp on the clothing and stomp and stomp and stop.
Speaker 1: And this is that physical agitation action we're talking about
Speaker 1: that shakes loose the dirt. Uh, And then they would
Speaker 1: end up pulling that out, ringing out the clothes, laying
Speaker 1: them on the ground or hanging them up. They would
Speaker 1: also use other materials to try and whiten anything that
Speaker 1: needed to be white, They try and bleach it. They
Speaker 1: would also use the sun to bleach the stuff. So
Speaker 1: this is the way the earliest clothes here. You know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Roman times, how they were washing them
Speaker 1: all the time. And uh, like we said associate with men,
Speaker 1: that would be about the last time we say that
Speaker 1: except to my house, I do the laundry. So I
Speaker 1: do the laundry and I do the cooking. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not we're not tied down by gender roles and
Speaker 1: at any rate medieval Europe. So this is where we
Speaker 1: start getting into some interesting terminology. So people would use
Speaker 1: things called washing bats, also called beetles or battle doors. Yes,
Speaker 1: raise the battle door and wash that tunic. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: essentially it's something that you would use specifically to again
Speaker 1: agitate the clothing while it's in flowing water. So usually
Speaker 1: this was done for most people literally along the side
Speaker 1: of a river. Yeah, yeah, you'd use it as kind
Speaker 1: of a I think that washing bats referred to like
Speaker 1: the scrubbing related devices, like it was used in conjunction
Speaker 1: with the scrubbing boards, right right, right, yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: scrubbing boards you also had there, and you had to
Speaker 1: go to where the water was. I mean some people
Speaker 1: had water come to them, but not very many. And
Speaker 1: again use that physical motion to loosen dirt washed away
Speaker 1: by water. You can do this in a tub with
Speaker 1: a handheld agitator if you weren't near any sources of
Speaker 1: running water. And that's uh, that's kind of how things
Speaker 1: how things went for centuries. Yeah. Do we get to
Speaker 1: the eight teenth century and uh, at this time, this
Speaker 1: is when we start to see the concept of laundry
Speaker 1: being quote unquote women's work. The idea being that women,
Speaker 1: since you know, they don't have to go out and
Speaker 1: farm all day, they can stay at home and do
Speaker 1: the easy work, you know, like the backbreaking laundry that
Speaker 1: has to be done by hand. It really was a
Speaker 1: very tough job. I mean, especially in places where you
Speaker 1: have to go run out and get the water. What
Speaker 1: does the washing Yeah, I got a quote here from
Speaker 1: a Nevada housewife from the The Kind of the Pioneer Days.
Speaker 1: Really her name was Rachel Haskell, and she said that
Speaker 1: doing laundry was the herculean task which women all dread,
Speaker 1: and also described it as the great domestic dread of
Speaker 1: the household because this is I mean, it wasn't just
Speaker 1: that it was backbreaking work. I mean you had to
Speaker 1: really put effort in it if you wanted clean clothes. Also,
Speaker 1: the materials you used could be kind of rough on skin.
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking about some caustic materials. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: a long time, white and natural fabrics were soaked in
Speaker 1: pure lie instead of being washed with soap because soap
Speaker 1: was really expensive. So so that's really fun um. A
Speaker 1: recent study out of the University of Montreal suggested that
Speaker 1: advances in household technology during the twentieth century was partially
Speaker 1: responsible for a jump in the number of of married
Speaker 1: women being in the workforce from five percent SIRC nineteen
Speaker 1: hundred to SIRC nineteen eighty UM and a decrease in
Speaker 1: time spent per week on household chores from fifty eight
Speaker 1: hours to just eighteen hours in the same approximate period
Speaker 1: of time, so dropping forty hours a week, a full
Speaker 1: time job worth of chores dropped in a week because
Speaker 1: of devices of convenience like the like the washing machine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, if you didn't have that river handy, you
Speaker 1: would uh, you would have have your have your bucket
Speaker 1: and a tool called depending on where you were. And
Speaker 1: I had to add this note because all of these
Speaker 1: tool names make me so happy. H a poser, Dolly dasher,
Speaker 1: punch or punch. I'm sure I'd want to punch if
Speaker 1: I had to do this. And something that at any
Speaker 1: rate looked a little bit like a plunger with like
Speaker 1: holes events in the base um to let water squeeze through,
Speaker 1: and you just stand over a tub on the floor
Speaker 1: and and manually agitate the laundry. Yea. By the way,
Speaker 1: you guys are really missing out because Lauren and I
Speaker 1: are both expressive people, and when we talk about how
Speaker 1: this happens, we acted out. So it's too bad this
Speaker 1: isn't a video podcast. No no, no, no, it's really
Speaker 1: good that it's not a video podcast. So moving on,
Speaker 1: we now get to seventy two. Now over in Great Britain,
Speaker 1: a fellow named h. Sidgier invented what we think was
Speaker 1: the first washing machine. And what this was was essentially
Speaker 1: a cage of wooden rods and a handle to turn
Speaker 1: those rods, and turning the handle move the rods which
Speaker 1: would agitate clothes within a VT. So you're still using
Speaker 1: hand power to do this, but you're no longer like
Speaker 1: actively in the water moving clothing around. Yes, so that
Speaker 1: that was a slight advantage, and other people started making
Speaker 1: similar sorts of washing machines. Now most of these were
Speaker 1: not really convenient for like home use. This was stuff
Speaker 1: an industrial level, and this is just too big and
Speaker 1: too clunky and too expensive for most people. It just
Speaker 1: wasn't practical for them. But it was showing where things
Speaker 1: were moving. The first patent wouldn't show up though, until
Speaker 1: about eighteen forty six. Right, Yeah, that's when you've got
Speaker 1: a patent in the U. S. Patent Office for a
Speaker 1: washing machine that cleans closed by rubbing them between two
Speaker 1: curved surfaces. And once again you mechanically move this yourself.
Speaker 1: You had a lever, and the lever is what made
Speaker 1: these curve surfaces move against each other. And it was
Speaker 1: that rubbing motion within water with these curve surfaces that
Speaker 1: would actually clean the clothing. Uh. It ended up being
Speaker 1: a pretty popular design and in fact would last well
Speaker 1: into the well the early nineteen hundreds, so nearly a century,
Speaker 1: even after other alternative methods were introduced. So eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: one we get James King who invented the revolving drum
Speaker 1: that's the basis of most washing machines and even dryers today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's what you've got to come probably. Yeah, although
Speaker 1: an improvement was made just a few years later, in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty eight, you had Hamilton's Smith who invented the
Speaker 1: revolving drum with reversing action, meaning the drum could actually
Speaker 1: revolve in either direction. Uh. So this would allow lots
Speaker 1: of different washing machines to use that kind of back
Speaker 1: and forth motion as a form of agitation. So if
Speaker 1: you have to help do some of the work for
Speaker 1: you of moving all that water exactly. So like the
Speaker 1: front loading uh types of washing machines we see today,
Speaker 1: most of those can turn in either directions, so they're
Speaker 1: really descendants of Hamilton's Smith's work. Then in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: four I had to add this in, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to include the snarky joke I wrote in the notes,
Speaker 1: which is that William Blaxton, who was a corn planter
Speaker 1: and manufacturer, created a washing machine and gave it to
Speaker 1: as a gift to his wife for her birthday, and
Speaker 1: then she threw corn at him. Okay, so, so while
Speaker 1: I make a joke about the guy buying his wife
Speaker 1: another appliance for her to do work with, and reality
Speaker 1: it actually was simplifying her life quite a bit at
Speaker 1: that At that point, it could probably be considered a
Speaker 1: sweet gesture. Yeah, yeah, because it means taking hours of
Speaker 1: time off of all the chores that she would have
Speaker 1: to do. I mean hopefully there was like chocolate involved
Speaker 1: two or something. Maybe it was maybe it was partially
Speaker 1: made from that, in which case it was probably not
Speaker 1: not a very effective but but no, no, actually a
Speaker 1: lot of washing machines, like he actually started to offer
Speaker 1: to sell them because she did like this. It did
Speaker 1: make it easier for her to wash clothes. And again
Speaker 1: this was mechanically operated. There was a hand crank. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like it was some sort of automated. He wasn't
Speaker 1: pouring steel drums in his scoring field, not steam powered
Speaker 1: washing machine or something. So she she would turn it
Speaker 1: by hand, but still made it easier, and because it
Speaker 1: was so practical, he started to sell them. And the
Speaker 1: price tag on a washing machine a William Blackston washing machine,
Speaker 1: according to the sources I saw, and keep in mind,
Speaker 1: this is another one of those things where I'm skeptical,
Speaker 1: but every source I found said it two dollars and
Speaker 1: fifty cents for a washing machine. That's uh. In eight
Speaker 1: seventy four, the calculators don't even go back that two
Speaker 1: dollars and cents would buy you the Nevada territory, but
Speaker 1: or a washing machine. Then in eighteen eighty eight we
Speaker 1: had Ellen Egloy, who invented a ringer to sit a
Speaker 1: top washing machines and helped dry out the laundry. She
Speaker 1: sold the rights to her idea for eighteen dollars. The
Speaker 1: story goes that she only sold the idea because of
Speaker 1: being a black woman. She didn't think that white women
Speaker 1: would buy the product if they knew who had created it.
Speaker 1: Um and I guess eighteen dollars really wasn't too shabby
Speaker 1: at the time, though, the fellow that she sold it
Speaker 1: to wound up making a good deal of money on it,
Speaker 1: although more on that in just a moment. So in eight,
Speaker 1: we have the Maytag Corporation being founded. Yeah, now, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be until seven that they would come out with
Speaker 1: a washer because Maytag did more than just washing machines,
Speaker 1: and and that was still mechanical, Yes, that is true.
Speaker 1: Still mechanical was not electric washer at that time. Well,
Speaker 1: which makes sense because only um eight percent of US
Speaker 1: homes at the time had electricity, only had running water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, if you're going to market it to
Speaker 1: a large group, and if you want to actually help people,
Speaker 1: then you have to design something that's going to work
Speaker 1: for the most people, right. I do think that the
Speaker 1: Maytag repair guy probably got called out for more repairs
Speaker 1: back in the mechanical days. He doesn't get a lot
Speaker 1: of according to the commercials, he doesn't do very much
Speaker 1: these days, although although at the time, since since telephones
Speaker 1: weren't very popular thing, I'm just stand outside. Also, it's
Speaker 1: Colin Ferguson who's the Maytag guy now, which is kind
Speaker 1: of weird. That's very strange seeing the guy from Eureka
Speaker 1: as the Maytag repair guy. In nineteen o five, we
Speaker 1: have Alva J. Fisher who produces the first electric washing machine.
Speaker 1: Now the motor at that time was bolted to the
Speaker 1: side of the washing machine and was unshielded an electric motor. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you guys, but I've been taught
Speaker 1: that two things you don't necessarily want to mix together
Speaker 1: are water and open electronics. Apple has told me many
Speaker 1: times that if I do introduce those two things, it's
Speaker 1: totally my fault. Um. Yeah, So it turns out that
Speaker 1: water from the vat could sometimes come out and hit
Speaker 1: the motor and cause a short circuit. Sometimes this would
Speaker 1: result in damage to the device. Sometimes it would result
Speaker 1: in a jolt of electricity hitting a person. But it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be until the nineteen thirties, presumably after one too
Speaker 1: many laundry workers got zapped that they would start to
Speaker 1: shield the motor from the rest of the washing machine,
Speaker 1: thus preventing water from actually hitting the motor. Uh. Kind
Speaker 1: of funny that it took nearly three decades for that
Speaker 1: to happen. We have the Hurly Machine Company of Chicago
Speaker 1: introducing the first electric power washing machine, which had the
Speaker 1: name of four According to one source, it was actually
Speaker 1: called the Mighty Thor and this was based off of
Speaker 1: Alva J. Fisher's design. So Fisher was working for the
Speaker 1: Hurly Machine Company at that time, so thor hits the market.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen eleven we have developments with the oscillating cylinder,
Speaker 1: which and also with domestic washing machines using sheet metal
Speaker 1: tubs mounted on angle iron frames to be the the
Speaker 1: basic design of your washing machine. That same year, the
Speaker 1: Uptown Machine Company, which would later become the Whirlpool Corporation,
Speaker 1: formed and produced electric motor driven ringer washers. You know
Speaker 1: we we mentioned ringers, you said, the ringer on the
Speaker 1: other one. That was one of the patents that they
Speaker 1: bought in order to build this machine. There you go,
Speaker 1: So you if you wonder what a ringer actually is,
Speaker 1: it's think of two rollers that are really tightly space together,
Speaker 1: and you ring the clothing by putting it between the
Speaker 1: two rollers. You turn a crank. This kind of pulls
Speaker 1: the cloth through and it squeezes that excess water out.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like imagining to steamrollers right next to
Speaker 1: each other. And also you don't want to put your
Speaker 1: fingers anywhere near there because they will get squish. All right.
Speaker 1: So then we get up to the nineteen twenties. That's
Speaker 1: when some manufacturers begin to introduce electric or gas water
Speaker 1: heaters that are part of the washing machine itself, because
Speaker 1: while we started to see running water entering in more homes,
Speaker 1: not all homes had water heaters. If you had water,
Speaker 1: there was a chance it was just going to be cold.
Speaker 1: So in order to make a more effective washing machine,
Speaker 1: hot water tends to wash clothes a little better than
Speaker 1: cold water does, so we'll get we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that with the modern ones as well, some
Speaker 1: machines had on board water heaters electric. Yeah. So but
Speaker 1: then once we start seeing water heaters going into homes,
Speaker 1: this became less important and you stopped seeing models with
Speaker 1: their own onboard heaters. For the most PARTO Maytag introduces
Speaker 1: a washing machine with an agitator. Um, it doesn't use
Speaker 1: an agitator to introduce a washing machine. That would just
Speaker 1: down irritating some guy coming to your house and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you're closer dirty, you need to wash them. Now we're
Speaker 1: talking about an actual component within a washing machine. Lauren
Speaker 1: is doing her head shaking thing. Uh. Nineteen thirties, we
Speaker 1: have manufacturers who begin to include a drain pump motor
Speaker 1: to remove water from a washing machine once the cycle
Speaker 1: is over. Because if you're thinking these early washing machines
Speaker 1: meant that water magically entered into the machine, then you
Speaker 1: did your washing, you turn some cranks or whatever, and
Speaker 1: then the water magically went away. No, you had to
Speaker 1: put the water there. You had to take the water
Speaker 1: back out, you know, you had to find some way
Speaker 1: of of you know, some of them had like a
Speaker 1: little drain spout type thing that you would drain at
Speaker 1: the end of the day. Whatever. This was an actual
Speaker 1: pump that would use mechanical motion to pump water back out.
Speaker 1: So again, uh, using electronics to kind of simplify work. Uh.
Speaker 1: Nineteen thirty seven, we have the Bendex Corporation introducing the
Speaker 1: first fully automated washing machine. Now, this involves using a
Speaker 1: clock timer that's connected to the washing machine controls. It
Speaker 1: tells the machine essentially what stay age it's in and
Speaker 1: therefore switches because before that you had a manual switches
Speaker 1: that were that were operated by a human human person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had to actually sit there and and or come
Speaker 1: back even more frequently to your washing machine. Right right,
Speaker 1: you have to sit there and say, oh, you know
Speaker 1: that that the timer says that the time has passed
Speaker 1: for it to do the wash cycle. Now, need to
Speaker 1: go and switch it over to do a spin cycle
Speaker 1: or something along those lines. So, yeah, this, this is
Speaker 1: another big advance. In the nineteen forties, washer production in
Speaker 1: the U S would largely stop as supplies and factories
Speaker 1: were bent to the war effort, because that was when
Speaker 1: World War Two was happening. For example, Whirlpool, which was
Speaker 1: then under the name nine hundred Corporation, produced some two
Speaker 1: million components for P forty Warhawk aircraft, from like propeller
Speaker 1: pitch controls to carburetor parts. Yeah, I hear they were
Speaker 1: the cleanest parts in all of the war effort. She's
Speaker 1: shaking her head again, and I'm just gonna move on.
Speaker 1: Ninety seven. General Electric claims that they invented the first
Speaker 1: fully automated shing machine. Now we assume that they mean
Speaker 1: fully automated washing machine that actually had an agitator, right,
Speaker 1: the previous one did not have an agitator. The agitator's job,
Speaker 1: again is to to provide that motion within the washing machine,
Speaker 1: within the tub. That's that's moving the water. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really it's really meant to simulate an ancient Roman
Speaker 1: stomping on your clothes. That's really what agitator is meant
Speaker 1: to do. That's the way I like to put it.
Speaker 1: So we then have very slow evolution in washing machine technology.
Speaker 1: It wasn't exactly one of those areas that required uh,
Speaker 1: a lot of of of advances to keep it, to
Speaker 1: keep the industry healthy. For one thing, once you buy one,
Speaker 1: you pretty much stick with it for a really long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't need one for a good bit. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I mean they're expensive and uh and they generally last
Speaker 1: a pretty long time. So we didn't see huge advances,
Speaker 1: but we did see some. And then we're gonna skip
Speaker 1: to nine. That's one of certain James Dyson, British inventor,
Speaker 1: creates a washing machine that has two cylinders rotating in
Speaker 1: opposite directions, which actually reduces the washtime and supposedly it
Speaker 1: actually washes clothes more effectively than traditional machines. Wouldn't surprise me,
Speaker 1: Dicens made a lot of interesting stuff. Two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: The last thing we have in our timeline. That's when
Speaker 1: engineers at the University of Leeds create a washing machine
Speaker 1: that uses just one cup of water to wash a
Speaker 1: full load of clothing. Yeah, when we talk about how
Speaker 1: much water are normal washing machines used one cup is crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about using less than two per
Speaker 1: cent of the water and energy required by conventional machines
Speaker 1: to wash clothing. And also the clothes are pretty much
Speaker 1: dry after you wash them. We haven't used that much water.
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, I don't have any more details on
Speaker 1: that about what is actually happening. I suspect laundry gnomes.
Speaker 1: I always suspect laundry. Now do to that. They're suspicious
Speaker 1: little jerks. Okay, so we've got We're gonna actually talk
Speaker 1: about what's going on in modern laundry machines washing machines.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: and thank our sponsor. Okay, So let's talk about how
Speaker 1: modern washing machines work. And we're gonna start with top
Speaker 1: loading machines. So these are the machines where there's a
Speaker 1: little door at the top of the machine, you lift
Speaker 1: it up, you put all your clothing in. Most of them,
Speaker 1: almost all of them, have an agitator inside. That's the
Speaker 1: kind of the central post that sticks up from the
Speaker 1: bottom of the of the washing machine. Although from now on,
Speaker 1: if you really want to, you could probably call it
Speaker 1: a posterer. Dolly dasher punch or punch. Okay, so if
Speaker 1: you're using your poster Polly punch, dasher paunch, it's like
Speaker 1: Rudolph uh. But the agitator has usually it has some
Speaker 1: fins on it and some other uh like protrusions on
Speaker 1: the bottom of it. Now, these serve a purpose. When
Speaker 1: it's turning in the water, it actually has this action
Speaker 1: upon the clothing that's that's also inside the machine. It
Speaker 1: will either pull it down towards the bottom of the
Speaker 1: machine or push it back up toward the top. And
Speaker 1: that's the agitating movements. You get to shake loose all
Speaker 1: that dirt. So again, trying to replicate all the other
Speaker 1: means we've used to clean clothes over the years. That
Speaker 1: inner drum that the clothes are sitting in itself may
Speaker 1: or may not move as well. Yeah, usually you have
Speaker 1: one that will uh spin because it has to drain
Speaker 1: up the water. But during the actual agitation process, it's
Speaker 1: pretty common that there's gonna be a breaking system on
Speaker 1: that thing, and it holds it in place. So the
Speaker 1: agitator is doing all the moving. Because if the drum
Speaker 1: were rotating the same time the agitator's rotating, it would
Speaker 1: reduce the effectiveness of the agitator. So yeah, most of
Speaker 1: these are going to have an inner drum that's going
Speaker 1: to be steady. It's connected to an outer drum. The
Speaker 1: outer drum is watertight. It has to be, or else
Speaker 1: you have a huge mess every time you attempt to
Speaker 1: make to clean clothes. The inner drum has holes in
Speaker 1: it that allow the water to drain out, and then
Speaker 1: it usually it's been picked up by a drain pump
Speaker 1: that pulls it out of the machine itself. But with
Speaker 1: your top loading washers, you've got intake valves that allow
Speaker 1: water to come in, and you have a cold water
Speaker 1: and a hot water one. Right, So generally speaking, most
Speaker 1: of these washing machines, uh, they if you set a
Speaker 1: washing machine to wash cold, it will only allow water
Speaker 1: from the cold intake to come in. If you want
Speaker 1: it hot, it will only allow water from the hot intake.
Speaker 1: So the machine itself for most of these, doesn't have
Speaker 1: its own discrete heating element. It's just relying on the
Speaker 1: temperature of the water from your house to provide the
Speaker 1: heat or the cold water. If you want warm, it
Speaker 1: does a mixture of both, right, So, uh, not too
Speaker 1: complex there Now, some some washing machines do have a
Speaker 1: little heating element and they'll allow uh warm or hot
Speaker 1: water to go across it to make it even hotter. Uh.
Speaker 1: That tends to be more common in front loaders that
Speaker 1: I've seen than top loaders, but it's possible that you
Speaker 1: could find id a top loader that also has its
Speaker 1: own discrete, little electric heating element. It kind of looks
Speaker 1: like the sort of thing you would see an electric stove,
Speaker 1: and then water just goes over it and that heats up.
Speaker 1: So then you've got a a water level sensor that's
Speaker 1: inside the machine itself, so when the water hits the
Speaker 1: right level, the sensor is triggered and that sends a
Speaker 1: message to the control center in the washing machine to say, hey,
Speaker 1: stop letting water in. It sends a signal to the
Speaker 1: intake valve. Has a little solenoid there that when you
Speaker 1: trigger it, it'll shut that intake valve so no more
Speaker 1: water will come in, so you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about a huge overflowing mess. And solidide evolves, of course,
Speaker 1: being the kind of thing so that there cannot be
Speaker 1: a exchange of water back out from You can't get
Speaker 1: the dirty wash water going back out into your neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, into the pipes type. Yeah, because that would
Speaker 1: be that would be really bad. So yeah, the valve
Speaker 1: has two purposes. One to stop more water coming in
Speaker 1: and to stop all the dirty water going back out.
Speaker 1: You only want the dirty water to go out through
Speaker 1: the sauce. Solenoid is like a one way thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of pinball machines its solenoids. That's what all
Speaker 1: the little triggers are used. Solinoids are using those just
Speaker 1: a little little trivia there. People who listen to uh
Speaker 1: current Geek have heard me bust out that trivia in
Speaker 1: the past. So now you've got the water has hit
Speaker 1: the right level, the mode goes into wash cycle. That's when,
Speaker 1: By the way, for these top loader ones, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you guys are familiar with this, but generally speaking,
Speaker 1: you have to put the soap in manually. Like you
Speaker 1: don't put it into a dispenser or something. It doesn't
Speaker 1: go in automatically. Now now you just you pour it
Speaker 1: on top of the clothing. Whether you're using liquid detergent
Speaker 1: or or a solid detergent doesn't matter. You put it
Speaker 1: in with the clothing. If you forgot to put it
Speaker 1: in there. You are not going to have that, you know,
Speaker 1: Daisy Fresh scent or whatever brand you happen to get.
Speaker 1: So the agitator begins to turn and it usually will
Speaker 1: what you guys, you've got to drive motor. Normally it's
Speaker 1: on the bottom of the washing machine. It also tends
Speaker 1: to act as a counter balance, a counterweight, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, you've got several counterweights in your washing machines
Speaker 1: because you've got lots of motion going on, and if
Speaker 1: you didn't have them there, you're washing machine would be
Speaker 1: dancing all over the place. Yes. Yeah, anyone who's ever
Speaker 1: had an unbalanced load and a washing machine and you
Speaker 1: start hearing that thumping noise, if you didn't have the
Speaker 1: counterweights in there, it would become catastrophic. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: There's there's actually a really complex suspension system. UM. It
Speaker 1: involves like a like a inner frame, a cable and
Speaker 1: pulley suspension, and these little like disc brake like mechanisms
Speaker 1: that connect that inner frame to the corners of the
Speaker 1: outer walls. UM. And that's so that when the frame,
Speaker 1: that interframe shakes, they slow it down softly so that
Speaker 1: it doesn't hit against the outer wall of the washer.
Speaker 1: And then because otherwise you would just be convinced that
Speaker 1: your house had been invaded by a horde of extremely
Speaker 1: loud ghosts, you know, who apparently are mad that you're
Speaker 1: doing laundry, really clumsy robots who are also anti long
Speaker 1: It could be ghost robots. That's yeahs terrible. So next
Speaker 1: you have the once the dry motor gets going and
Speaker 1: it starts moving the agitator. Uh. Once the agitator is done,
Speaker 1: it's done oscillating, which is that that rotating motion where
Speaker 1: it goes in one direction, stops, goes in the other direction. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's what's actually moving the clothes around getting them washed.
Speaker 1: Then you have the drain pump pulling all that wastewater
Speaker 1: out from the tub of the washing machine and through
Speaker 1: the drain pipe. Uh. That's uh, it's it's actually the
Speaker 1: same pump that circulates the water into the tub during
Speaker 1: the wash cycle. Um. Thanks to the pump motor being reversible,
Speaker 1: it spins one way when you're driving a wash cycle
Speaker 1: and the opposite way when you're draining the tub exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so after this, then you've got the the those
Speaker 1: brakes that are on the inner drum that keep it
Speaker 1: from rotating while the agitator is moving, they release and
Speaker 1: the inner drum begins to spin. Uh. And and that
Speaker 1: that removes the water from the clothes. Yeah, it can.
Speaker 1: It can spin a lot faster than the agitator does
Speaker 1: because the although the motor itself usually only has one speed,
Speaker 1: and that's the fast speed, a gear reduction mechanism will
Speaker 1: translate the motion to to the gentle agitators speed. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like a washing machine version of a transmission Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because and and there's even more than that involved, because hey,
Speaker 1: the pump and the agitate spin mechanisms are both driven
Speaker 1: by the same motor. In some machines, there's in fact
Speaker 1: an actual transmission system with this automatic clutch that UM
Speaker 1: that spins free with the inner drum during the agitate
Speaker 1: spin cycles and then locks into the outer drum and
Speaker 1: the pump system during the water related cycles. UM. Or alternately,
Speaker 1: the motor can hook in via a pulley system, which
Speaker 1: I understand less well and thus we'll not talk about.
Speaker 1: Essentially uses pulleys where you have different sized disks to
Speaker 1: uh to translate the motion either as fast and and
Speaker 1: frantic or more. You know, kind of makes sense, makes sense,
Speaker 1: but Yeah, so that's when you've got all the counterweights
Speaker 1: draining away when when that thing is in spin, it's
Speaker 1: really there's some serious g forces coming out of that
Speaker 1: spinning drum. So that's why you have to have those
Speaker 1: counterweights to keep that washing machine from bursting out and
Speaker 1: killing your family. Frequently, they're made of concrete because why not.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever thought, oh, this machine is so heavy, yes,
Speaker 1: for a reason. It's filled with concrete and crazy crazy mechanics. Um,
Speaker 1: if anything goes wrong during this entire process, there's usually
Speaker 1: an overflow port that will pipe water directly out onto
Speaker 1: your floor. Yes, that was not a design flaw. It
Speaker 1: was intentional because if it goes up over the sides
Speaker 1: of the inner tubs, um, it could get those electronics wet.
Speaker 1: And then we're right back to that old bolting the
Speaker 1: motor directly to the side of the washing Yeah. Bad times.
Speaker 1: So we talked about how that that uh that special
Speaker 1: uh leads team gut one that would wash a load
Speaker 1: of clothing with one cup of water, and we talked
Speaker 1: about how that was less than two percent of what
Speaker 1: your average washing machine is able to do. So top
Speaker 1: loading washing machines, if you're using a high efficient top
Speaker 1: loading washing machine. We're talking one that is as efficient
Speaker 1: as they come. You're talking still talking about using around
Speaker 1: twenty gallons of water per wash. That s A typical
Speaker 1: non high efficiency top loading washer is closer to forty
Speaker 1: gallons a k A hundred and fifty one, and older
Speaker 1: ones are even thirstier than that. Some use as many
Speaker 1: as fifty five gallons two hundred eight liters of water.
Speaker 1: So uh and again, you know, we talked about how
Speaker 1: this technology doesn't necessarily develop that quickly and that there's
Speaker 1: not a pressing need necessarily to upgrade because these are
Speaker 1: expensive purchases for most people. It's one of those things
Speaker 1: where you're like, unless it breaks down, we're keeping this
Speaker 1: going as long as we can keep it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're they're they're even expensive enough. I mean plenty,
Speaker 1: plenty of households do not own their own washer drivers. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was it was quite some time before
Speaker 1: I had my own. I often was doing one of
Speaker 1: those people I had to go to the laundromat pretty
Speaker 1: recent for me, so so so yeah, if you if
Speaker 1: you end up having one of these things, then it
Speaker 1: can be it can be tough to make the move
Speaker 1: to say, let's go to something that conserves more water.
Speaker 1: But the nice thing is that even if you take
Speaker 1: the environmentally friendly stuff and you say, let I can't
Speaker 1: consider that because it's it's my my price range. If
Speaker 1: you look at the long term, and I'm I'm talking
Speaker 1: like a few years here, you can save more money
Speaker 1: with one of the more efficient machines just from the
Speaker 1: water and energy use. Yeah, because front loading machines and
Speaker 1: these high efficient machines, the high efficient top loaders use
Speaker 1: less water and less energy, and therefore the ongoing expense decreases. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's lower than what you would use for a
Speaker 1: traditional top loader, and you will save money in the
Speaker 1: long run. But that's the long run. Not everybody has.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about front loading machines. They're pretty similar.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you've got a door that opens in
Speaker 1: the front as opposed to on the top. Uh, And
Speaker 1: there's a spinning drum inside them, and there's no agitator,
Speaker 1: so the drum does all the agitating on its own.
Speaker 1: You have water coming in along with soap. In fact,
Speaker 1: the early process is identical to top loading. The water
Speaker 1: comes in through intake valves. It may move over a
Speaker 1: heating element, it might not. Uh. It actually comes in
Speaker 1: through the drum. The drum, the inner drum has holes
Speaker 1: in it that allow the water to pass through rather
Speaker 1: than a spout at the top of them sheen, which
Speaker 1: is what most loloaders have exactly. Uh. There's also an
Speaker 1: outer drum, just like with the top loadery of the
Speaker 1: inner drum. That's where all the clothes are and that's
Speaker 1: where the water comes through. The outer drum is again
Speaker 1: watertight or else to just be a big mess um.
Speaker 1: And then the the inner drum will spin one way
Speaker 1: and then the other will have this oscillating motion, very
Speaker 1: much like an agitator, and that's doing all the agitating
Speaker 1: for your clothing. Again, you have to have counterweights on
Speaker 1: the drum, the outer drum itself in order to stabilize it.
Speaker 1: And there's some counterweights also in other parts of the
Speaker 1: washer to make sure it doesn't go walking. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: once the water comes in, a lot of these front
Speaker 1: loaders have a detergent drawer. You put the detergent inside
Speaker 1: the drawer and then you close it. When the water
Speaker 1: comes in, it will actually flow through that drawer first
Speaker 1: and then pull that all the soap and stuff into
Speaker 1: the inner drum itself. So it's you know, this is
Speaker 1: one where you don't put the soap in after you
Speaker 1: put in the clothing. You put it in on the drawer,
Speaker 1: and then you close the drawer and then you start
Speaker 1: the washer. Uh, presumably put the clothes in there already.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I would hope at some point you would put
Speaker 1: the clothing, because otherwise you just have soapy water. It's
Speaker 1: fun to watch. I get bored and not. Netflix doesn't
Speaker 1: always have something I want to watch. So anyway, again,
Speaker 1: you have the hot and cold water, You've got the
Speaker 1: you know, the same store stuff as top loader. It's
Speaker 1: got a water level sensor just like the top loader does,
Speaker 1: so it knows when to shut it off. That basically
Speaker 1: is taking its cues from either whatever setting you've said,
Speaker 1: like whether it's a light load, a moderate load, or
Speaker 1: a heavy load or some of them can actually detect
Speaker 1: how many how how much clothing is in there based
Speaker 1: on weight or other parts of the water sensor, and
Speaker 1: we'll just shut off automatically. So it's ridiculous. Yeah, it's kindle. Also,
Speaker 1: you can put in more clothing in a front loader
Speaker 1: than you can of a comparable size of a top
Speaker 1: loader because there's no agitator there, so so you've got
Speaker 1: more space, right, so you might be able to put
Speaker 1: in a few pounds of clothing more than you could
Speaker 1: with a top loader, so fewer loads of laundry. It's
Speaker 1: another way of being more efficient. Yep. So then you've
Speaker 1: got a motor that's bolted to the tub. It's often
Speaker 1: acting as another counterweight just with the top loader, and
Speaker 1: it's job is to turn that drum, to turn it, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, make it oscillate, and then also to spin
Speaker 1: it when it gets to the spin cycle that you
Speaker 1: know it's already drained the water. There's also a drain pump,
Speaker 1: just like with a top loader, and then the whole
Speaker 1: drum spins wicked fast until it pulls most of that
Speaker 1: water out. So the brains of it is a control module.
Speaker 1: This is the same for both machines top loaders and frontloaders,
Speaker 1: and it usually will be sent signals to all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff like when to allow one phase of the
Speaker 1: the washing process to go to the next. It also
Speaker 1: will maintain information about the door because unlike a top loader,
Speaker 1: which often you can open the door while the top
Speaker 1: loader is working and it will continue working different stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had an old one at my my parents had
Speaker 1: an old one where if you opened it in the middle,
Speaker 1: it was just going away, so you could still you
Speaker 1: could add more stuff to it. In fact, in some
Speaker 1: cases that you had to manually add in, like if
Speaker 1: you want to put in fabric softener, you had to
Speaker 1: wait for it. It was not fully automated. You had
Speaker 1: to wait for the right time and then pour it
Speaker 1: in manually. Um front loaders are different. They have a
Speaker 1: locking mechanism and yeah, yeah, and it's only if that
Speaker 1: mechanism has since that the door has actually closed it
Speaker 1: will allow it to start. Otherwise you could end up
Speaker 1: with lots of leaking. Yeah, that sounds much messier potentially. Yeah. Granted,
Speaker 1: if the sensor is not working, then it may think
Speaker 1: it's closed when it's not really closed, and then you
Speaker 1: get water everywhere. But assuming everything's working correctly, you should
Speaker 1: be fine. In any case, it's slightly less water than
Speaker 1: you would be using for a top loader generally. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's normally somewhere around the twenty gallon or seventy six
Speaker 1: liter amount. So that's the same as that high efficiency toploader. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it tends to use less energy, so it tends
Speaker 1: to be both more energy efficient and water efficient. And
Speaker 1: you can find some that are even more efficient than that.
Speaker 1: And it all depends upon things like the angle of
Speaker 1: the drums. Some of them are not angled directly horizontal.
Speaker 1: Some of them are angled so that they're kind of
Speaker 1: like there's a deep end and a and a shallow
Speaker 1: end in a way from when you're looking at it
Speaker 1: in the front, it's like tilted downward a little bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: And some of them are just it's based upon how
Speaker 1: the water comes in and how efficient it is. Uh.
Speaker 1: You still see lots of of advances, Like whenever I
Speaker 1: go to C E S there's always some companies that
Speaker 1: have like the cutting edge washer dryers, and they talk
Speaker 1: about how their technology has has improved to the point
Speaker 1: where you're you're using less water than ever and less
Speaker 1: in electricity than ever. So we're still seeing those advance
Speaker 1: and of course we're also seeing this come into the
Speaker 1: Internet of things side. Oh sure, you know you get
Speaker 1: push notifications when your laundry is done, or you'll be
Speaker 1: able to have it work in tandem with other electronics
Speaker 1: in your home. For reasons I don't fully understand. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: if I if I could just get my dryer to
Speaker 1: dry my clothes without me having to run back up
Speaker 1: the three flights of stairs to where my laundry room
Speaker 1: in my house is. And I'm not I'm complaining here.
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of people have it a
Speaker 1: lot harder, and I'm overall really glad that I don't
Speaker 1: have to do this in a river. Yeah. By the way,
Speaker 1: if if someone does covet you a little bit about
Speaker 1: about having to take a little extra effort, that does
Speaker 1: not automatically mean that person feels that they are in
Speaker 1: a worse position than anyone else on the Facebook planet.
Speaker 1: So let's all just accept that just because some people
Speaker 1: on the internet, uh do feel that way, that they
Speaker 1: are in a worse position than anyone else on the planet,
Speaker 1: Let's not let's not make the assumption that everyone isn't dead.
Speaker 1: Because once in a blue moon, I do plain about things,
Speaker 1: but I do so with the full knowledge that yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: I inhabit a very privileged position in multiple ways. So
Speaker 1: at any rate, as someone who does the laundry in
Speaker 1: my home and our our laundry machines are not on
Speaker 1: the same floor as our bedroom, which means that there's
Speaker 1: lots of hauling up and downstairs. I also feel that
Speaker 1: I want my electronics to be interconnected so that when
Speaker 1: I go to cook something, it tells me, Hey, your
Speaker 1: cooking shirt is clean. You want to put that one
Speaker 1: on because that's the one. You don't care if you
Speaker 1: get grease stains on it. Yes, slob, I would like
Speaker 1: it if it were more polite, but I don't have
Speaker 1: high expectations of my electronics in that regard, so at
Speaker 1: any rate that wraps up. That's my main concern. I
Speaker 1: want to I want to live Yeah, yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to live on the on the heart of gold and
Speaker 1: have my doors be very planked. Yeah was it? Was it?
Speaker 1: Thank you for I can't remember what they said every
Speaker 1: time you opened it up, but they would say thank
Speaker 1: you every time they open and thank you every time
Speaker 1: they closed. Um, yeah, drove it drove Marvin the Martian
Speaker 1: batty as I recall, Yeah, Marvin, Marvin the Robot, Marvin
Speaker 1: the Martian is And you're right, I said, Marvin the Martian.
Speaker 1: Yet this is just yet another example of how if
Speaker 1: there are two names that are similar, I'm going to
Speaker 1: mix them up. Marvin the paranoid android, your plastic pal
Speaker 1: who's fun to be with. So, now that we're done
Speaker 1: with all that, and I, you know, once again shown
Speaker 1: my ability to take any two names and mix them together.
Speaker 1: I want to thank Thomas F. And I know I
Speaker 1: got your name right because I'm reading it via Facebook
Speaker 1: for asking us the question about the washers and the dryers.
Speaker 1: We will. We will do a dryer episode at some point.
Speaker 1: We will, we will, But this was surprisingly fascinating. Yeah again,
Speaker 1: you know, we had we had everything from gender politics,
Speaker 1: to historical uh significant things that are happened over the
Speaker 1: course of centuries, to just engineering and and thinking outside
Speaker 1: the box on how can we make something that's as
Speaker 1: laborious and and tedious and a herculean dreadful task less
Speaker 1: So and it was kind of fun. So if you
Speaker 1: guys have any suggestions for future topics for tech stuff,
Speaker 1: maybe you've got your own terrible task that you just
Speaker 1: want us to cover, let us know. Send us an
Speaker 1: email our addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or
Speaker 1: drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler, or
Speaker 1: handle it all three It's tech stuff, hs W and
Speaker 1: Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
Speaker 1: it have stuff works dot com