It’s 1947 and time to redeem the war bonds for — kitchen appliances of course! Lots of big makers — Kelvinator, Westinghouse, Philco, Roper, Magic Chef — were on hand to show their products and compete for families’ stockpiled savings. Above: Will it be a new Kelvinator range? Photo: (State Archives of Florida)
Manufacturers whose products used natural gas industry were pitted against those who used electric. Philco was pushing electric (State Archives of Florida) This photo and the next look like the manufacturers were part of one long booth sponsored and managed by the electric home appliance industry — see the “Live Electrically” along the top?
Westinghouse was electric, too. (State Archives of Florida)
The gas appliance industry also had a booth for all their member companies. (State Archives of Florida)
There were Speed Queen washers and mangles (ironers) too. Still quite old-fashioned looking… When did the more modern, automatic clothes washer come into being? (State Archives of Florida)
There were phonographs too. I see these at almost all the estate sales I go to. No one buys them. (State Archives of Florida)
Fitted kitchens for the masses: Launched for real right about this time. 1947. The war was over. Housing production was beginning to ramp up in earnest. Folks were finally getting “modern” homes (I just read again the other day that in 1940, only half of American homes had complete indoor bathrooms.) That’s only… 7o years… of modern kitchens, modern homes in the U.S.
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The mangles on washing machines were NOT ironers, but made to get excess water out of the clothes and spare you hand-wringing, else they’d take forever to dry on the line. Automatic washers were first made by the Bendix Corporation in 1937 and more fully developed by 1947 when Bendix and General Electric both brought out models. There may have been a pressing machine like was found in laundries, but these were not mangles. Rowenta did make them (and maybe still does) and I’ve seen Martha Stewart use hers on TV.
My grandma had an old fashioned, non-automatic washer on her front porch. The mangle was mounted above the tub. Us kids thought it was pretty neat.
Hi CarolK, thanks for this clarification. I recalled seeing ironers referred to as mangles, but there you go!
However… further research indicates the term and process may have merged into ironing too today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangle_(machine)
The wringer on the top of the washers was to get water out of washing. The mangle – on the right, was to iron shirts, sheets, anything that could be laid flat.
I agree. My mom had a Mangle ironer way into the 1960’s, a big one, in our basement and she always called it “The Mangle.” However, the wringer washing machine (and I remember one of those when I was little) was just called a wringer washing machine and I don’t think it was commonly called a mangle.
A classmate of mine had her arm crushed in one of those washers and had to learn how to manage with one arm, which she did, amazingly. those machines were dangerous!
Ack! Those things sound nasty!
I disagree. We called it the “wringer” on the washers and the “mangle” was an ironer, at least in my early 1950s youth. There were also “pressers”, which didn’t use rollers but instead used a lid which lifted up, mostly for pants and for shirts that needed creases. My aunt, who raised 13 kids, had both a mangle and a presser in her basement.
I think perhaps mangle and ironer were different geographical terms.
In the South, the “wringer” was on top of the washer. We just ironed our clothes by hand.
And then there were the trouser frames: Spring-adjusting, stiff wire, rectangular frames that you inserted into the wet (but mangled free of excess water) trousers, with the wires following the lines of the desired creases, and then hung up in the basement to drip and dry.
They were meant to cut down on the ironing….
“Wringers” is what many called them.
I just learned so much thanks to all these great stories. I bet the different names for all the washing machine extras depends on where you grew up. Southern states will called it one name while west coasters use another name.
Actually CarolK you have left a big gap in the early history of automatic washers. Westinghouse introduced the Laundromat in 1940 and Blackstone offered their first automatic top loader then as well. GE and Frigidaire both offered their first automatics in 1947 as did 1900 Corp. AKA Whirlpool (it was branded only as a Sears Kenmore for 1947, and additionally under the Whirlpool name in 1948). Maytag, Hotpoint, and Norge were next in 1949, the Norge being a front loader while the Hotpoint and Maytag’s were top loaders. Kelvinator got into the laundry business by buying Altrofer Bros (maker of ABC washers) in 1953 and slapping the Kelvinator name on the ABC-O-Matic washer. Last but not least Philco started producing automatic washers under the Philco/Bendix name after Philco bought the appliance division of Bendix from Avco in 1956.
Patrick, thanks for all the information about the development of automatic washers! I was getting my information pretty much straight from Wikipedia. You should have written the article.
“Live Electrically” was quite an achievement for Florida and other southern states post war. Electricity and indoor plumbing were milestones. My mother was raised in 1930s rural Florida – outhouses and oil lamps. Great vintage photos.
And why not? Electricity was like–what?– a penny a KWH?
Actually you are both right. Mangle wringers were on old washers, but mangle IRONS were a thing too😊
https://youtu.be/WkgN2YpeKu0
I love it when everyone is a winner!
My grandmom had an old wringer washer in the early 70s sitting in the shed. she brought it out one summer when the new washer was on the fritz. we were told appliance scare stories of a “mythical” kid in the 40s who apparently got his arm stuck in the wringer, it pulled him up to his shoulder, and the “safety” latch popped open and broke his neck. it worked, we never played around that thing ever.
One of the reasons that automatic washers were developed was that there WERE really bad accidents of kids getting their hands or arms caught in the wringer, especially after they were powered and no longer hand-cranked.
Yikes!
“we were told appliance scare stories of a “mythical” kid in the 40s who apparently got his arm stuck in the wringer,”
That was my father. My grandmother saved him just in the nick of time, but his arm was broken in five places.
yowsa!!
thank goodness for Grandmom!!
Actually the first device invented to replace the wringer on a washing machine was the spin dryer and it was introduced because wringing the water out of clothes using centrifugal force is gentler on clothes then mashing them between to hard rubber rollers. Spinning clothes also gets more water out of them without ripping off buttons or tearing zippers too. The washer/spin dryer was introduced by Easy in 1922 and like a wringer, the spin dryer was part of the washing machine itself. Other manufactures like GE and Westinghouse followed suite offering washer/spin dryers and you could by an updated version from Easy into the mid 1960’s and Hoover offered their version well into the 1970’s. Automatics gained favor because the housewife did not have to spend a whole day tending to the laundry as she did with a wringer washer. Even so automatics did not outsell wringer washers for the first time until 1953.
Not to mention (and I won’t) the many off-color jokes about grabby wringers causing otherwise decorous housewives to cuss a blue streak. But blue was already in the air, since there was the “bluing” added to your whites that had begun to yellow, and stained your hands on a Blue Monday…..
Apparently the use of wringers on laundry day, in millions of kitchens and basements and porches, compelled all manner of responses in popular culture, from grim to giddy.
My grandmother in the hills of Kentucky had a hand-cranked wringer on her leggy washer, and I LOVED feeding the clothes through it. For a boy like me, there was pleasure in the mechanical crank, the squoosh of the water being squeezed out to dribble back into the washer’s tub, the flat-as-a-pancake clothes spooling out the back and landing in the basket with a dull thwack, and my grandmother admonishing me to pick up the smooshed items and shake out the wrinkles immediately, before then taking them out to hang on the clothesline in the sunny back yard.
And through all those hours at the wringer…nary a body appendage assaulted.
The wringer washers were still sold in the U.S. into the 1990s by Speed Queen, though most people were buying automatic washers by then.
If you look closely at the add with the wringer washer and mangler….the ad does call it a “Speed Queen Ironer”….at least in this case that’s what this machine is.
The 1927 Sears catalog uses the term wringer. It also features a large roller type ironing machine for an astonishing $90! – about $1300. today.
My mom had a wringer washing machine. She bought a Bendix washer dryer combination (one machine) to replace it. I think that was in the mid to late 50’s. I had aunts and neighbors that owned mangles for ironing. And yes, ironing can still be done the same way. People love to iron sheets, napkins, and table linens with them. They are called rotary irons, Miele makes one. Some are small steam flat irons. I have ironed hundreds of napkins at friend’s house with a small flat iron. I just love looking at your old appliance ads. My, how things have changed.
I want to get a Speed Queen, because I love the name! 🙂
I bought a new Speed Queen washer and Dryer when we moved into this house last year. I bought the pair without electronics since I wanted the machines to be easy to fix. They have changed the line this year. However, after doing some research, I noticed Maytag has brought back an old fashioned washer and dryer that is much like the Speed Queen non electronics line.
Wringer washers are still available thru Lehmans.com – located in Kidron, OH. The owner of the hardware store noticed the local Amish community was having difficulties finding non-electric appliances so he started sourcing products geared toward them. Then other people who wanted to get off the grid investigated his wares. Jay still visits the store his son and daughter run and they’ve made very attempt to offer Made in USA product. (Caution – you can spend a pretty long time perusing their catalog and wishing – worse than the seed catalogs in January!)
I grew up with a wringer in the basement (where the laundry belongs!) and clothes were hung up outside or in the basement. Clothes got considerably cleaner using wringer washers but the convenience of automatic washers & dryers made them less attractive more than urban legends of injuries. They started a study in the 1960’s that wasn’t conclusive and it seems there are about as many washer injuries from kids sticking their hands in still-spinning washers of today. Most wringer injuries were due more to loose-fitting or dangling clothing becoming caught int eh mechanism.
I was probably about 9 yrs old when it became my chore to do laundry (for 8 people!) which involved wringing the clothes from the washer to the rinse tub, wringing it into the 2nd rinse tub, and the final wring to the basket. The only times the wringer popped up was when putting too “thick/wadded” an item through (too many towels or jeans). Never had even a close call doing this job.
I also grew up with propane stoves, the first didn’t have a pilot light, subsequent ones did.
Automatic washers have had a shut-off that stops the tub from spinning when the lid is open for years. I’m talking at least 50 years here and probably more. I can’t ever remember my mother having a washer that did’t stop automatically when we lifted the lid and I’m almost 64.
Carolyn, wringing out the clothes 3 times sounds like too much work to go though. I’m glad I have an automatic washer -a Samsung front-loader. The door actually locks after the cycle starts. It’s never given me a moment’s trouble. (Knock wood!)
I’m reminded of an old joke about the woman who finds a rabbit in her front-loader. She asks him what he’s doing in there and he says “This is a Westinghouse, ain’t it? Well, I’m just westing!”
I have read that in yee old days (not that long ago, really) washing day was The Single Most Despised day of the week among homemakers.
‘Blue Monday’
There you go!
I would tend to agree, Pam. I grew up hanging the clothes on the clothes line as we didn’t get a dryer until about the time I was in high school. We also didn’t have a dryer until we’d been married for almost 10 years. I don’t mind hanging the clothes on the line, but it is nice not to have to worry about the clothes getting rained on, thrips jumping up to the wet clothes or stepping in dog “hazards” from our Lab mix, Gwen.
The first washer that had the safety lid switch that stopped all action when the lid was raised was, I believe, the 1949 Maytag, which used a mercury switch inside the lid, and when the lid was raised it tripped the switch and shutoff the motor even if the machine was only agitating. I know that by 1955 you could get Norge washers with or without a switch that kept the machine from spinning with the lid open. By 1960 most all new automatics had them.
Well, it sure looks like this post has put us all through the wringer. 😉
wah wah
I ironed on a mangler in the late 1950s. The name ‘Mangler’ sure was correct. I’d put in the pillow cases & they’d come out with either a crease where you didn’t want or a jumbled bunch ironed flat! Ditto on the hankerchiefs. We ironed everything in those years. No steam irons, Mom had a sprinkler bottle to lightly dampen clothes when ironing. When Mom said it was ironing day, my sister & I took off. Thank goodness for dryers & wash ‘n wear fabric.
Nell, I can’t find your post to reply, but my mom had those pants stretchers, too. I think my sister has them now and I believe that Vermont Country Store has new ones. They did anyway the last time I checked.
English is a very flexible language, so if you mingle “mangle” and “wringer,” and then wash, rinse, repeat, it can take a while to iron out and wrangle the meaning. At least, so it appears to me. At least I’m not agitated.
I remember:
Sprinking clothes and putting them in the freezer for a while before ironing so everything became damp…
Ironing handkerchiefs and boxer shorts
The wringer at the Banff Hot Springs pools – we put our bathing suits through it before leaving
Aaahhh, the good old days!
“Wringers” were on top of washers. “Mangles” were rotary “irons” … great for sheets (before fitted), pillowcases, napkins, handkerchiefs — all kinds of “flat linens.” However, my mother was so adept with her mangle, she would do shirts, pants, skirts, blouses with it. Zip, zip, zip … and it was done.
I have a photo of my grandmother standing in her kitchen in Michigan that is so similar to the 1947 Florida State Fair kitchen I had to look twice to make sure she was not standing in that kitchen!! Same layout, almost the same white cabinets. I treasure that photo!!