Washing machine

A washing machine (laundry machine, clothes washer, or washer) is a machine designed to launder clothing. The term is mostly applied to machines that use water. Other ways of doing laundry include dry cleaning (which uses alternative cleaning fluids and is performed by specialist businesses) and ultrasonic cleaning.

Modern-day home appliances use electric power to automatically clean clothes. The user adds laundry detergent, which is sold in liquid, powder, or dehydrated sheet form, to the wash water. The machines are also found in commercial laundromats where customers pay-per-use.

Laundering by hand involves soaking, beating, scrubbing, and rinsing dirty textiles. Before indoor plumbing, it was necessary to carry all the water used for washing, boiling, and rinsing the laundry from a pump, well, or spring. Water for the laundry would be carried, heated on a fire for washing, and then poured into a tub. This meant the amount of warm, soapy water was limited; it would be reused to wash the least soiled clothing, then to wash progressively dirtier laundry.

Removal of soap and water from the clothing after washing was a separate process. First, soap would be rinsed out with clear water. After rinsing, the soaking wet clothing would be formed into a roll and twisted by hand to extract water. The entire process often occupied an entire day of work, plus drying and ironing.

An early example of washing by machine is the practice of fulling. In a fulling mill, the cloth was beaten with wooden hammers, known as fulling stocks or fulling hammers.

The first English patent under the category of washing machines was issued in 1691. A drawing of an early washing machine appeared in the January 1752 issue of The Gentleman's Magazine, a British publication. Jacob Christian Schäffer's washing machine design was published in 1767 in Germany. In 1782, Henry Sidgier was issued a British patent for a rotating drum washer, and in the 1790s, Edward Beetham sold numerous "patent washing mills" in England.

One of the first innovations in washing machine technology was the use of enclosed containers or basins that had grooves, fingers, or paddles to help with the scrubbing and rubbing of the clothes. The person using the washer would use a stick to press and rotate the clothes along the textured sides of the basin or container, agitating the clothes to remove dirt and mud. This crude agitator technology was hand-powered, but still more effective than actually hand-washing the clothes.

More advancements were made to washing machine technology in the form of the rotating drum design. These early design patents consisted of a drum washer that was hand-cranked to make the wooden drums rotate. While the technology was simple enough, it was a milestone in the history of washing machines, as it introduced the idea of "powered" washing drums. As metal drums started to replace the traditional wooden drums, it allowed for the drum to turn above an open fire or an enclosed fire chamber, raising the water temperature for more effective washes.