Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host John.
Speaker 1: That's Chrick LND. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And it's time for
Speaker 1: a classic episode, folks. This is an episode that originally
Speaker 1: published May twenty one, two thousand and fourteen. It is
Speaker 1: called How Clothes Dryers Work, so it goes kind of
Speaker 1: hand in hand with the how washing machines work. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to these classic episodes, you know, a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago, I did that one, but you know,
Speaker 1: well that one left me all wet. This one blows
Speaker 1: me away, puns. Let's listen in. So, what was the
Speaker 1: first clothes dryer? Lauren? The Sun? Yeah, that thing is
Speaker 1: just pulling so much double duty. I mean triple duty,
Speaker 1: like like Quinn tuple duty. What what above? Quickly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like infinite duty. Yeah, there's a lot of duty going
Speaker 1: on with the sun, including drying our clothes. So clearly,
Speaker 1: if you've ever had to dry close without having the
Speaker 1: use of a dryer, I've done this. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people have done this at some point or another,
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 and just letting the sun
Speaker 1: do its thing evaporate all that water. Usually take you know,
Speaker 1: a couple hours, um, depending upon where you were at,
Speaker 1: how hot it was, how humid it was. Humidity could
Speaker 1: slow things down, obviously, but not only dried up the clothing.
Speaker 1: It would also cause colors to fade over time, sometimes
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, depending upon the dye being used. Now, sometimes
Speaker 1: you plan for that, that was what you want it.
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. So,
Speaker 1: so wash your technology evolved, Um, it really intricately, as
Speaker 1: as you may have heard in our previous episode. But
Speaker 1: since the sun is relatively effective and drying clothes this
Speaker 1: way is not really difficult, backbreaking, time consuming work, dryer
Speaker 1: technology didn't really develop along the same lines. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: just it wasn't as big a deal because yet to
Speaker 1: wash something you had to put in a lot of effort, right,
Speaker 1: you had to, especially before the washing machine, you had
Speaker 1: to scrub things manually or stomp on them or beat
Speaker 1: them against rocks or throw them away and get new stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just was not easy to do, and
Speaker 1: so there was a need to develop automation there. It
Speaker 1: just it felt like there's this is so much work.
Speaker 1: It's it's the woman's dread, as we said in the
Speaker 1: last podcast. According to one quote, so that made sense.
Speaker 1: But for drying, like you said, it was, it was
Speaker 1: free to dry it by the sun, so you didn't
Speaker 1: have to you know, put in any kind of expense
Speaker 1: there except maybe for a clothesline and maybe some maybe
Speaker 1: some closed pins, but that's about it. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: you just had to lay it out and collect it.
Speaker 1: That's all the labor that was involved. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: as important to develop a dryer, but it didn't make
Speaker 1: things convenient, right, You couldn't have dry clothes very quickly
Speaker 1: using that rate. So if it happened to be raining
Speaker 1: or something like that, Yeah, so there certainly were people
Speaker 1: who were thinking, there's gotta be a way to dry
Speaker 1: clothes 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 story 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, not entirely and frequently, um, but so so,
Speaker 1: most of what we're going to tell you comes directly
Speaker 1: from the U. S. Patent Office. That's what I relied
Speaker 1: upon most heavily. Although our first example is not among
Speaker 1: them because it wasn't a United States invention. It was
Speaker 1: actually a French one. This is when you're going to
Speaker 1: see if you ever do a search for the history
Speaker 1: of dryers, this is going to pop up all the time.
Speaker 1: Usually the year is specifically seventeen, but the best I'm
Speaker 1: going to say is around the year eighteen hundred, a
Speaker 1: French inventor known only as post Shaun p O c
Speaker 1: h o N sometimes listen as M. Posh On, but
Speaker 1: I believe the M is for Monsieur Poshan, not necessarily
Speaker 1: a name that begins with him 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'd 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: Now here's the thing. Um. Sometimes this meant that clothes
Speaker 1: would get a little uh you know, burnt, Yeah, a
Speaker 1: little little extra crispy um or or full of smoke
Speaker 1: in any case. Yeah, so you would end up damaging
Speaker 1: clothes this way, And according to most reports, this is
Speaker 1: the first tumble dryer, but didn't catch on mostly because
Speaker 1: of the downsides. Right, the idea that you would end
Speaker 1: up damaging clothes, Well, if you're gonna damage them, then
Speaker 1: that's not helpful at all. So the interesting thing to
Speaker 1: me is that this basic approach that he took ends
Speaker 1: up being the kind of the central design of dryers
Speaker 1: in the future. It would just take a long time
Speaker 1: to perfect the heating elements. Years. Yeah, so sorry, but yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's interesting that again, we couldn't really find any
Speaker 1: primary sources on this, so this story could be apocryphal.
Speaker 1: How I her, I'm going to go ahead and say
Speaker 1: that it sounds like it's possible, so we'll give it
Speaker 1: a pass. Sure, then in this is the next really
Speaker 1: official dryer technology that we have to report on, and
Speaker 1: it's one that we actually mentioned in our episode about
Speaker 1: washing machines. That's when um Ellen Edgley invented a ringer
Speaker 1: to sit on top of washing machines and help dry
Speaker 1: 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, soo, we have another
Speaker 1: African American inventor, this one by the name George T. Sampson,
Speaker 1: who filed a patent for a clothes dryer. In this case,
Speaker 1: he spelled dryer d R I E R, which some
Speaker 1: of the patents are in that spelling. Some of them
Speaker 1: are d R Y E R I. Can do what
Speaker 1: they want. Yep. 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,
Speaker 1: he 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 always go that extra step your research. Guys. I'm
Speaker 1: saying that to all of our listeners because I expect
Speaker 1: that they will occasionally have to write things like if
Speaker 1: you're a student, you may have to write a paper.
Speaker 1: This is why taking that extra step, Like if you
Speaker 1: just find a web page that says it's about that stuff,
Speaker 1: see if you can find a primary source, because it's
Speaker 1: always going to give you a better idea of what
Speaker 1: the real story. Yeah. Then we have a patent by
Speaker 1: Seward H. Davis for his clothes drying machine, and it's interesting.
Speaker 1: So now he's decided to incorporate an oven directly into
Speaker 1: the 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,
Speaker 1: so you would. But he also incorporated 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 tumbler,
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. Um, So, yeah, pretty interesting. And
Speaker 1: then he also he also specifically pointed out in the
Speaker 1: patent that the whole idea was to allow the clothes
Speaker 1: to fall, to tumble, like you didn't want to just
Speaker 1: spin and try and force the water out, but to tumble,
Speaker 1: because that tumbling motion would have it go through that
Speaker 1: hot air and thus evaporate the water much more quickly,
Speaker 1: pushing the air through it. And therefore sure, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of cool. Nineteen five Henry Sieben he attempts a
Speaker 1: different approach. His patent has a closed dryer that is
Speaker 1: more like a heated cabinet with wire shelving inside it.
Speaker 1: So imagine that you have like a little like cabinet
Speaker 1: or closet and it's got wire shelves, and you put
Speaker 1: the clothes on the shelves, and then you have an
Speaker 1: electric fan that draws air through the machine, which allowed
Speaker 1: for faster drying. Now, he didn't specifically include an element
Speaker 1: that with heat air, but you would presumably have this
Speaker 1: near some sort of other device that would heat the air,
Speaker 1: like a stove. So this cabinet would just pull the
Speaker 1: air through, which would circulate through the clothes. So kind
Speaker 1: of similar to Seward H. Davis's approach of tumbling, but
Speaker 1: they're stationary, so it's just pulling the air. So again
Speaker 1: this this another idea that becomes important in uh in
Speaker 1: modern day dryers. So the important thing to remember here
Speaker 1: is the fan that pulls the air through. These are
Speaker 1: all various elements, the tumbler pulling the air through. These
Speaker 1: are all things that are going to come into play
Speaker 1: with the modern day dryers. Now out you still had
Speaker 1: to preheat the air though with something like a stove.
Speaker 1: Then we get to nineteen thirty seven. Now here's the
Speaker 1: guy that most people credit. Yeah, although again the citations
Speaker 1: different from what I was able to find. Okay, see,
Speaker 1: because he filed for a patent in ninety seven, this
Speaker 1: is James are more. James are right? Thank you. Um,
Speaker 1: it wasn't granted until, which we suspect world War two
Speaker 1: probably had something to do, had other stuff on their minds, right,
Speaker 1: the patent office was probably drafted. Uh So yeah N
Speaker 1: seven is the filing and is the awarding makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: But it was for a closed drying machine. And this
Speaker 1: is the basis for closed dryers as we now know them.
Speaker 1: And so he what he did was he added applying
Speaker 1: heated air that didn't need to be preheated in an oven.
Speaker 1: He wanted to have a heating element either gas powered
Speaker 1: or electric, and in fact would eventually create both types. Right.
Speaker 1: He He also created a ventilation system so that air
Speaker 1: can can move through the dryer and then exhaust out
Speaker 1: of it, carrying that water vapor out. So you see,
Speaker 1: this is the combination of that rotating drum and that
Speaker 1: idea of the cabin exactly. So by combining the two,
Speaker 1: he has the best approach. And in fact, you could
Speaker 1: tell us the best approach because it's the one that
Speaker 1: lasted the test of time. So yeah, he uh has
Speaker 1: often cited in a lot of the websites we saw
Speaker 1: as having patented this this approach as early as nineteen thirty.
Speaker 1: But I went to the patent office, I mean online
Speaker 1: to 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 it's like, I'd like to
Speaker 1: see your archives from nineteen thirty. Yeah, that probably would
Speaker 1: not have gone over well. They said, you've heard of
Speaker 1: the internet, right, Well, you can actually do searches online
Speaker 1: on the patent office. Google has a Great Patent search function,
Speaker 1: but you can also go to the U S Patent
Speaker 1: Office and use their search function. I use both because
Speaker 1: I could not find it in one, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to try both versions in case 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 could
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 information Internet.
Speaker 1: You should check it more carefully. Yeah. So, anyway, he
Speaker 1: did file in nineteen thirty seven and he did end
Speaker 1: up working with another company in nineteen thirty eight. That
Speaker 1: company would be the Hamilton's Manufacturing Company located in Two Rivers, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: Pride and Joy of Wisconsin of Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they actually have a museum dedicated to this former manufacturing
Speaker 1: company and they used James R. Moore's design. They actually
Speaker 1: paid him for this, and they released in the June
Speaker 1: Day clothes dryer based off this design. The early models
Speaker 1: used gas for heat to heat the heating element, so
Speaker 1: you'd have to like light the pilot light every time
Speaker 1: you wanted to dry a load of laundry. And then
Speaker 1: once we were done drying that load of laundry, should
Speaker 1: probably remember to blow it out. Yeah, you had to
Speaker 1: extinguish it or else you would just be wasting lots
Speaker 1: of gas or possibly creating a fire hazard, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, dryers big fire hazards in general. Do not
Speaker 1: run your dryer and then leave the house just in case.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to scare anybody, but it is,
Speaker 1: but linked fires can happen. Yeah, so just a little
Speaker 1: word of caution in the middle of the episode. But yeah,
Speaker 1: later models were electric and they still created the gas
Speaker 1: ones too, but manufacturing was interrupted shortly after they started.
Speaker 1: They produced about six thousand of them and then stopped suddenly,
Speaker 1: all because of the event we have already referenced in
Speaker 1: this podcast, afore mentioned World War two. So world War
Speaker 1: two causes a manufacturer to stop. This was the case
Speaker 1: across multiple industries because, yeah, the war effort needed all
Speaker 1: that material and and labor and a lot of the
Speaker 1: factory space. Yes, so all of that meant that dryers
Speaker 1: were not seen as being important to the war effort.
Speaker 1: It was put on hold. World War two was was
Speaker 1: over and the Hamilton's Manufacturing company got back into this,
Speaker 1: but they were no longer the only game in town.
Speaker 1: By this time. Another big company, much bigger than Hamilton
Speaker 1: Manufacturing actually got into the closed dryer game, and that
Speaker 1: would be General Electric. And so then it was off
Speaker 1: to the races. But but not not fast races, and
Speaker 1: not cheap races. No incredible expensive races, very very slow,
Speaker 1: expensive races. While we're tumbling around inside the clothes dryer,
Speaker 1: I thought maybe we should take a quick break, we'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Around the same time, the first electric
Speaker 1: dryer to include a glass window in the front was introduced.
Speaker 1: And this is a design element, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's just kind of nice to look at. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to mention it because it was designed by Brooks Stevens,
Speaker 1: who's another Wisconsinite. He was a Wisconsin designer who also
Speaker 1: worked in an architecture, furniture, and auto design, including that
Speaker 1: greatest car of all, the Oscar meyer Weenomobile. Man. Truly
Speaker 1: a visionary. We could do a full episode just on that.
Speaker 1: Actually I should mention all the inventors we've talked about
Speaker 1: have done some pretty phenomenal things besides inventing dryers. So
Speaker 1: but this, I mean, no one approached creating the Oscar
Speaker 1: Meyer Wiener be Also, you know we won't go back
Speaker 1: and fill those out nineteen fifties. Well, according to the
Speaker 1: Bureau of Labor Statistics, a dryer in the mid nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties cost about two d thirty dollars, which if you
Speaker 1: adjust for inflation, would be closer to two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for a dryer. Yes, so not a whole lot of
Speaker 1: people could afford it on um. I shall also point
Speaker 1: out that this same paper cited some of the erroneous
Speaker 1: sources that I mentioned earlier, um, the ones that could
Speaker 1: not be supported by saying the patent office, I guess
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the patent offices don't
Speaker 1: don't talk to each other frequently. Yeah, this inner departmental
Speaker 1: stress type thing. This was I had to include it.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are some crazy patents out there, y'all.
Speaker 1: If you if you ever have a really slow day
Speaker 1: and you just want to amuse yourself, just start typing
Speaker 1: random words into a Google patent search and then enjoy.
Speaker 1: But one of the crazy ones I found was wild
Speaker 1: by William C. Shoulin, and the title of the patent
Speaker 1: is hair drying Attachment for clothes dryer. This this cannot
Speaker 1: be what I think it is. I mean, well, if
Speaker 1: you think it's you're putting your hair in a clothes dryer,
Speaker 1: it's not. But if you think it's a tube connected
Speaker 1: to your clothes dryer that's used as a hair dryer,
Speaker 1: it totally is. It's a tube using the heat from
Speaker 1: the the dryer. I guess I guess you know it's
Speaker 1: good to conserve energy, and so if you're already creating
Speaker 1: 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 head,
Speaker 1: the helmet. Yeah. I have no idea what those are called,
Speaker 1: and my hair days are long over. But anyway, it
Speaker 1: would fit over the person's head and uh and presumably
Speaker 1: dry it using the heat from the hair dryer. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't know how popular this invention was if it
Speaker 1: were ever actually uh, you know built, because just because
Speaker 1: something's patented doesn't mean that you're going to have real
Speaker 1: examples 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 D 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 dryer 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 induce
Speaker 1: wearing the pressure and yeah, you don't have to heat
Speaker 1: up the air as much, so you don't have to
Speaker 1: pour as much energy in it. As we'll talk about
Speaker 1: a little bit later, it takes a lot of energy
Speaker 1: to power a dryer. In fact, it's one of the
Speaker 1: most energy hungry appliances that typical house has, so this
Speaker 1: will be a way of reducing that. Also, Channeling maintained
Speaker 1: that the high quote unquote roasting temperatures of clothes dryers
Speaker 1: and the fast rotation of the drum meant that clothing
Speaker 1: was being damaged and turned into lent, and that his
Speaker 1: invention would appeal to people who wanted to get a
Speaker 1: more gentle drying of their clothing, it wouldn't require as
Speaker 1: much rigor. Now this particular approach has been experimented with
Speaker 1: a few times, but it's tough to make a chamber
Speaker 1: that is a partial vacuum, particularly if you need to
Speaker 1: have an exhaust to the outside to get rid of steam.
Speaker 1: Then you can't really make a vacuum without crazy valves
Speaker 1: and then having a venting time as well as a
Speaker 1: vacuum time, and and and and more energy being put
Speaker 1: in even than a regular dryer. Yeah, you can't. You beviously,
Speaker 1: can't keep introducing hot air into such a thing because
Speaker 1: then you wouldn't have a vacuum. So it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those that was an interesting idea, but no one
Speaker 1: i think, has really found a way of implementing it
Speaker 1: where it really made sense. Plus it it makes it
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to make a partial vacuum. It
Speaker 1: means they would make it more expensive. Yeah, they are working.
Speaker 1: NASA is funding someone to work on something related to that.
Speaker 1: But I'll talk about that way at the end of
Speaker 1: the podcast. Excellent, there's a little teaser for you. So
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, again going back to our friends
Speaker 1: at the Bureau of Labor, statistics while they're not talking
Speaker 1: to the patent office. The price of a dryer was
Speaker 1: closer to a hundred ninety dollars, which in today's money
Speaker 1: is closer to a grand, so half the expense of
Speaker 1: what it was in the nineties. Yeah, and about forty
Speaker 1: pc of all households had one. Okay, So when we
Speaker 1: get up to nineteen seven, the unit price is about
Speaker 1: three hundred forty dollars. So remember it was a hundred
Speaker 1: ninety dollars in nineteen seventies, three forty ninety seven, and
Speaker 1: you think, oh, what the heck the price went up.
Speaker 1: It didn't go down, well, except that when you adjust
Speaker 1: for inflation from seven, it's still pretty close to three dollars.
Speaker 1: So the value has of that money has increased, the
Speaker 1: buying power has increased um for that amount for three
Speaker 1: so you don't so it's actually cheaper in the long run.
Speaker 1: UM and of households owned a dryer by this time.
Speaker 1: That same year, over in Europe, a manufacturer called Electrolux
Speaker 1: would develop an energy efficient type of machine, the heat
Speaker 1: pump or hydraulic dryer. Over the next couple of years
Speaker 1: UM they gain market share kind of slowly but surely
Speaker 1: over in Europe and also in Australia, although they have
Speaker 1: not caught on yet in the United States. UM. More
Speaker 1: on how those work later on, but but they're pretty cool.
Speaker 1: They use some like forty of the amount of energy
Speaker 1: that traditional dryers do, so that's that's pretty awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now we're getting up to just about today, right yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so every year Energy Star, which is a program
Speaker 1: within the e p A, the the US Environmental Protection
Speaker 1: Agency UM, they announced an area of technology that's deserving
Speaker 1: of what they call an Emerging Technology Award, and in
Speaker 1: it was advanced clothes dryers UM, which makes sense. According
Speaker 1: to Consumer reports, dryer's account for some six percent of
Speaker 1: US home energy use, which accounts for for three or
Speaker 1: more per year, which is think about this. You aren't
Speaker 1: running your dryer constantly. You run your dryer occasionally when
Speaker 1: you have to do laundry, and you don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to do laundry every single day. So if you're talking
Speaker 1: about an appliance that you only use occasionally and it
Speaker 1: makes up six percent of your energy, that's that's incredible. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it means that you know, really small innovations could make
Speaker 1: for pretty huge savings and in terms of both money
Speaker 1: and you know, overall carbon footprints. Um. So. So the
Speaker 1: e P A specifically or energy Star I guess I
Speaker 1: should say specifically called out a Samsung model uh named
Speaker 1: Cleverly DV for rolls off the tongue it does um
Speaker 1: uh that it estimates could save enough energy to run
Speaker 1: and AF clothing washer for eleven months um and also
Speaker 1: has an integrated smart system for monitoring your clothes remotely
Speaker 1: 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 that way you
Speaker 1: cut off the cycle. Yeah, you don't have it continuing
Speaker 1: for some predetermined amount of time when the clothes are
Speaker 1: already dry. There's no need to keep it going. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're just wasting energy. And shrinking clothes unless you're strapped
Speaker 1: for entertainment, and that's just you know, you're just sitting
Speaker 1: there watching the clothes tumble, in which case, HI, dr horrible.
Speaker 1: You know, I thought I had said it on delicates.
Speaker 1: Turns out I said on bulky. But let's be fair,
Speaker 1: the pandemic means I really put on a lot of pounds,
Speaker 1: So it's probably more appropriate for me to be on
Speaker 1: the bulky setting while I process this. Let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. We'll be right back. Okay, So now we're back.
Speaker 1: Radiss specifically dig into how dryers work, and we've kind
Speaker 1: of mentioned a lot of the elements already. You've got
Speaker 1: a typical clothes dryer, so we're talking about just your
Speaker 1: basic model that, yeah, most of mostly in the United States,
Speaker 1: is the type you're going to run into. UM has
Speaker 1: a rotating tumbler. So that's your drum that rotates around
Speaker 1: and around and the clothes tumble within it. You've got
Speaker 1: some kind of heating element to heat air, which is
Speaker 1: then somehow drawn through that tumbler, right, So you probably
Speaker 1: have holes in the tumbler to allow air to pass through,
Speaker 1: and then you've got an exhaust pipe of some sort,
Speaker 1: so you can vent out that the warm humid air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because no, you don't want to keep the steam in there.
Speaker 1: It's just gonna make the clothes take even longer to dry.
Speaker 1: So by venting it out and constantly replacing it with dry,
Speaker 1: warm air, you're gonna end up, you know, drying a
Speaker 1: much faster. You just vent out all the steam. So
Speaker 1: let's start talking about all these various elements and how
Speaker 1: they work together. Let's start with the fan. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's start. Let's start at the end. Yeah, the end,
Speaker 1: because the end is the beginning. The beginning is the end.
Speaker 1: It is the alpha and the omega of it's a
Speaker 1: flat circle, yeah it is. We didn't mean to get
Speaker 1: all philosophical, but it is pretty late on a Thursday afternoon, guys,
Speaker 1: and things get weird. So the fan is located at
Speaker 1: the exhaust end of the dryer. It's not at the
Speaker 1: very front of the dryer. It's at the very end
Speaker 1: of it. But it ends up when it turns pulling
Speaker 1: air in from the dryer and exhausting it out the
Speaker 1: exhaust vent. That's the direction of air flow, so it's
Speaker 1: not blowing air in, it's essentially pulling air out of it.
Speaker 1: So that means you kind of have some place where
Speaker 1: air to come into the dryer or else it is
Speaker 1: trying to create a vacuum, right, which is less of
Speaker 1: that's less effective. Yeah, if you just have a heating
Speaker 1: element and you create a vacuum, then you've got a
Speaker 1: hot spot in your in your dryer and no air
Speaker 1: inside the tumbler, and that's not going to help. So
Speaker 1: these dryers have vents or holes that are in them
Speaker 1: that allow air to pass into the actual dryer and
Speaker 1: and be pulled in, Yeah, pulled in and then passed
Speaker 1: over a heating element, which, as we mentioned before, is
Speaker 1: either 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: And we've made some assumptions and we apologize, but no,
Speaker 1: you put the clothes in the tumbler, that's where the
Speaker 1: warm air goes into next, it passes into the door area.
Speaker 1: That's where the length screen is. The air, not the clothes. Yes,
Speaker 1: the air, Yes, flows are passing through the door area.
Speaker 1: You have not replaced the lent screen, and you should
Speaker 1: do that so they The lent screen is there obviously
Speaker 1: to capture lent from clothing so it doesn't end up
Speaker 1: clogging up the rest of the system. But that's where
Speaker 1: the airflow goes to next. So it's coming in through
Speaker 1: these venting areas, into the tumbler, out through the door
Speaker 1: venting area. Pulled passes through the fan because that the
Speaker 1: next stop is where the fan is, and then the
Speaker 1: fan blows it out the exhaust area, which usually you
Speaker 1: have some sort of weird that that tubing stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: the tubing stuff that you can cut in half and
Speaker 1: then you can have robot arms. My cosplay is different
Speaker 1: from your cosplay that is accurate. I have a video
Speaker 1: that proves that. So that's your basic airflow, and that
Speaker 1: is the secret to drying the clothes is that introducing
Speaker 1: this dry warm air, possibly dry hot air. It all
Speaker 1: depends upon the mode you've set it on. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about that in a second. Certainly Okay, so let's talk
Speaker 1: about how it gets warm or hot? What is this
Speaker 1: heating element? Like? Okay, have you ever seen a toaster
Speaker 1: like just regular toast a toast and you know when
Speaker 1: you when you mean, 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 sort of heating element. It's about of nichrome wire. Okay,
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.
Speaker 1: Now we've got the tumbler. Uh, it's it's a really
Speaker 1: simple pulley system. Actually, yeah, 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 yep, and the
Speaker 1: motor turns. That ends up turning the belt, which ends
Speaker 1: up turning the tumbler. It's pretty it's one of the
Speaker 1: simplest machines ever. Actually, the pulley system. So yeah, usually
Speaker 1: you have to have maybe you know, two pulleys that
Speaker 1: are involved. One is creating tension on the other so
Speaker 1: that it stays in place, because obviously, like if it
Speaker 1: slips a belt, that's when you're starting to get this
Speaker 1: weird noise and your dryer is not gonna be turning properly,
Speaker 1: and then you need to shut things down before your
Speaker 1: motor burns out. But assuming everything's working fine, it's just
Speaker 1: gonna turn the tumbler. Next. We have the controls. So
Speaker 1: we have two different types of controls. Right, the modern
Speaker 1: dryers you would buy in an appliance store today, most
Speaker 1: of them have digital controls, which involves having a micro controller.
Speaker 1: But if you're going with an old dryer, let's say
Speaker 1: like the kind of dryer I grew up with, where
Speaker 1: it had like a dial and buttons and a little button. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you punch the button saying okay, I'm going to do
Speaker 1: permanent press, and you push the permanent press button and
Speaker 1: it and it clicks in, and then you would turn
Speaker 1: the dial to the right setting, and then uh, it
Speaker 1: would be possessed and start rumbling. And that's because there
Speaker 1: would be a series of of gears and cams. So
Speaker 1: and it worked a little bit like a like an
Speaker 1: egg timer. Yeah, yeah, kind of. Yeah, you have like
Speaker 1: a you have a physical capacity that that when it
Speaker 1: ran out, it would it would cause a shot off valve,
Speaker 1: a shot off circuit disconnect. Because with a CAM you
Speaker 1: can think of it as like think of it like
Speaker 1: a metal key, and when the metal key makes contact
Speaker 1: with a contact point, it completes a circuit. Right, So
Speaker 1: when the circuits complete, electricity can flow. And then as
Speaker 1: long as that that key is making contact with the
Speaker 1: contact point, it'll stay in place. The electricity will continue
Speaker 1: to flow. But at the timer, when the timer comes out,
Speaker 1: a mechanical piece will push the key out the way,
Speaker 1: breaking the circuit and thus the dryer. Yeah, so we're
Speaker 1: talking about programming something through actual physical moving pieces, mechanical pieces.
Speaker 1: But it's it's doing the same sort of stuff that
Speaker 1: digital controller is doing digitally, it's just doing it all
Speaker 1: mechanically and with electronic pieces. So yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: exciting stuff. Like if you ever were to take one
Speaker 1: of these apart, first of all, I hope you don't
Speaker 1: need it afterward, because if you do anything, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're anything like us, you're not going to get
Speaker 1: that back together. No. No, we might be able to
Speaker 1: put something back together, but it ain't gonna work. Let's
Speaker 1: just put it that way. Really interesting though. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you can actually see that they are all these little
Speaker 1: moving parts that need to come into play so that
Speaker 1: they touch these contact points and create these circuits. They
Speaker 1: 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, you 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 in the United States,
Speaker 1: But like you were saying, Lauren, it's not the only
Speaker 1: kind out there. One of them is called a condensing
Speaker 1: clothes dryer. So these don't have a vent to exhaust steam.
Speaker 1: They don't have that fan pulling the air through inventing
Speaker 1: it out. Instead, these dryers allow water to condense and
Speaker 1: then collect, either draining into a collection pan or tank,
Speaker 1: or more likely draining into the house water waste system.
Speaker 1: So if you have a washer dryer combo, something that
Speaker 1: can act as both a washer and a dryer, it's
Speaker 1: usually this type of dryer. It's a condenser dryer more
Speaker 1: often than not. Uh, And so putting an exhaust on
Speaker 1: a washer that would be really not good. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you've got like the wastewater exhaust. But if you
Speaker 1: had just a pipe that was supposed to allow air
Speaker 1: to go through, water would go through that too, Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: which would make it an inefficient washer. So yeah, then
Speaker 1: you have 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 temperature starts to
Speaker 1: go down, but this heat pomp continues that cycle, so
Speaker 1: the cold side is removing the water, the hot side
Speaker 1: is increasing the temperature, so you can have a more
Speaker 1: efficient means of drying out the clothes inside. So again,
Speaker 1: no need to exhaust unless which is great because if
Speaker 1: you don't have to exhaust this thing, like by exhaust,
Speaker 1: I mean you don't have to have a pipe where
Speaker 1: the exhaust air flows through. There's no need for that
Speaker 1: in this model, and that's great because when you have
Speaker 1: an exhaust pipe that's open to the environment, that means
Speaker 1: that you're losing some of the heat that you want
Speaker 1: to put inside the clothes just going out the exhaust pipe. Sure. Sure,
Speaker 1: and you're you're losing through that exhaust pipe that heat
Speaker 1: out into your house. A switch, for example, during the
Speaker 1: summer months can make you run your A cmore 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. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, there was an idea back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties to try and use microwaves as a as
Speaker 1: a means of drying clothes. So you would make a
Speaker 1: special dryer that be a microwave dryer. Supposedly there are
Speaker 1: some of these in Japan, but I've never seen like
Speaker 1: an actual source source about it. But the real problem
Speaker 1: with this is arking. So arking is when you get
Speaker 1: these little plasma forms. If you've ever accidentally put something
Speaker 1: metal in a microwave, and here's where I tell you,
Speaker 1: do not put metal in a mica on purpose. Now
Speaker 1: that's very bad. But if you've ever accidentally done it,
Speaker 1: then you might have seen arching where you see these
Speaker 1: little plasmat lightning bolts. Yeah, or if you've ever had
Speaker 1: one of those plasma balls where you put your fingers
Speaker 1: on it, it's kind of like that too. In fact,
Speaker 1: it is like that exactly. What's what's happening. Um, it's
Speaker 1: not good for your microwave in general. I used to
Speaker 1: have a microwave that had a special stand that came
Speaker 1: with the microwave. Okay, that was meant for popcorn. Like
Speaker 1: you put a bag of microwave popcorn on it, and
Speaker 1: it would elevate the popcorn so that it would have
Speaker 1: more uniform heating. Despite the fact that this came with
Speaker 1: the microwave, which I would assume means it's safe to
Speaker 1: put in the microwave, it would occasionally mark. Not all
Speaker 1: the time, but sometimes you would get a mark, and
Speaker 1: I would think, I do not want micro microwave popcorn
Speaker 1: that badly. Yeah, that's vaguely terrified. Yeah. So anyway, if
Speaker 1: you were to put stuff that's like if you had
Speaker 1: metal stuff in your clothes, either like change or or yeah,
Speaker 1: or buttons or other clasps things that are metal, then
Speaker 1: that could possibly cause this arcing problem which could damage clothing.
Speaker 1: And in fact, that's the main reason we haven't really
Speaker 1: seen it implemented. There have been other people who have
Speaker 1: tested it, and there's still people who are thinking that
Speaker 1: there might be a way of doing this in a
Speaker 1: in a in a manner that's not going to make
Speaker 1: your clothes burn up right right, which is really the
Speaker 1: per us of me drying my clothes. I don't know
Speaker 1: about everybody else. There are occasionally shirts where I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: never mind, we'll see step one for me, as I
Speaker 1: want to get my clothes dry, but step two is
Speaker 1: I do not want to burn holes in them. Yes,
Speaker 1: but okay, So as unlikely as it sounds that this
Speaker 1: could be a really viable plan. This, this is the
Speaker 1: kind of system that that NASA has granted some some
Speaker 1: money too. They granted one company specifically called Umqua all
Speaker 1: in capital letters because why not, it's spelled exactly the
Speaker 1: way it sounds. They granted them some funding through their
Speaker 1: Small Business Innovative Research Program back in twleven, and um
Speaker 1: that the system that MUA is working on the last
Speaker 1: time I checked, involves ceiling clothes in in a vacuum
Speaker 1: bag and um cleaning them by jetting water and soap
Speaker 1: through the bag and then drying them via microwave radiation.
Speaker 1: And then furthermore making them all soft and cuddly with
Speaker 1: jets of air. Interesting, so you've got a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of things in there that are are similar to a
Speaker 1: pro ches that were considered. Yeah, so maybe this could
Speaker 1: be a terrific failure in space space. In space, nobody
Speaker 1: can clean your underwear. It's a problem. I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean you're in microgravity. I mean you
Speaker 1: either you either have to bring infinite changes of underpants
Speaker 1: with you, right, which, try and get that through customs,
Speaker 1: right right, I mean, and it's really expensive to bring
Speaker 1: stuff into space. You don't want to do that. I
Speaker 1: mean you you want to be able to wash him.
Speaker 1: Everyone wants clean underwear. Yeah, no, that is very and
Speaker 1: if you don't, you should. Okay, we're not judging, We're
Speaker 1: just I'm judging. Okay, we're judging a little. That wraps
Speaker 1: up this classic episode of tech Stuff how closed dryers work.
Speaker 1: I hope you found it interesting. If you have suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech stuff,
Speaker 1: let me know. Reach out to me on Twitter the
Speaker 1: handle we use as tech stuff h s W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Text stuff is
Speaker 1: an i heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.