The history
From beating clothes on river stones to drums that spin 1,000 times a minute: the machine that gave people back their washing day.
For most of history, washing clothes meant carrying water, heating it on a fire, and scrubbing, beating and wringing by hand, usually done by women and often taking a whole day. Inventors spent centuries trying boxes, paddles, drums and rollers turned by hand, then added electric motors, and in 1937 a machine that could wash, rinse and spin on its own. Today billions of people use one, but billions more still wash by hand, and the race is on to make every wash use less water and power.
1691
English patent for a washing machine
England
1782
Rotating drum washer patent
Henry Sidgier, England
1797
US patent for washing clothes
Nathaniel Briggs, USA
1842
Public baths and wash house in Liverpool
Inspired by Kitty Wilkinson, England
c. 1906–1908
Electric washers made in quantity
1900 Washer Co. and Hurley (Thor), USA
1930
Electric washing machine in Japan
Shibaura (Toshiba), Japan
1934
Self-service laundry (washateria)
Fort Worth, USA
1937
Automatic home washing machine
Bendix Home Appliances, USA
1946
Heavy-duty synthetic detergent
Tide, Procter & Gamble, USA
1976
Microcontroller-run washing machine
Servis, UK
1998
Direct drive drum washing machine
LG Electronics, South Korea
1690 – 1910
Inventors try boxes, paddles, rotating drums and rollers for squeezing out water. Every one of them still needs a person to turn the handle.
1691
The first English patent in the category of washing machines was issued in 1691. For centuries before that, people washed clothes in rivers and tubs, beating out the dirt with wooden paddles and scrubbing with ash lye or soap.
Why it mattered. It shows that people were already dreaming of a machine to take the pain out of washing day more than 300 years ago.
1782
Henry Sidgier was granted a British patent for a rotating drum washer. Clothes went inside a wooden drum, and turning a handle rolled them through the soapy water. In the 1790s Edward Beetham sold many 'patent washing mills' in England.
Why it mattered. A turning drum that lifts and drops clothes is still how most of the world's washing machines work.
1797
Nathaniel Briggs of New Hampshire received a United States patent titled 'Clothes Washing'. On 15 December 1836 a fire at the Patent Office in Washington destroyed thousands of early patents and models, including his. Nobody today knows for sure what his machine looked like.
Why it mattered. The very first American washing machine patent is a mystery, a reminder of how much of this history was never written down or has been lost.
1843
John Turnbull patented a 'Clothes Washer With Wringer Rolls', a washer joined to a pair of rollers that squeezed water out of the clothes. Mangles and wringers like this became a common sight in Victorian homes, and in 1862 Richard Lansdale of Manchester showed a rotary washer with wringing rollers at the London Exhibition.
Why it mattered. Getting water out is half the job, and it is what today's fast spin does without any rollers.
1876
1871–1876
Margaret Colvin, a mother of seven, patented an improved washing machine in 1871: a hollow cylinder that turned inside a boiler and could clean many kinds of cloth without damaging them. She showed her Triumph Rotary Washer in the Women's Pavilion at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. It did so well that her husband left farming to make and sell it.
Why it mattered. The people who did the washing were often the ones who best understood how to make it easier.
1901
1901–1903
Miele began in 1899 making cream separators and butter churns. Its first washing machine was a wooden tub with a paddle inside, turned by hand with a lever, much like a big butter churn. By 1910 Miele was selling a washer with its own electric motor.
Why it mattered. Farm machines for stirring milk gave engineers a ready-made way to stir clothes.
1907
Maytag was founded in 1893 by Frederick Maytag and partners to make farm machinery. In 1907 it built its first washer, the Pastime: a wooden tub worked by a hand crank. Washers soon became the company's main business.
Why it mattered. Washing machines went from a sideline to one of the biggest home products in America.
1800 – 1900
Laundry is done by hand: in rivers, tubs and shared wash houses. It is heavy, hot work, and it is mostly women's work.
1832
During a cholera epidemic, Kitty Wilkinson, an Irish migrant and labourer's wife, had the only boiler in her neighbourhood. She let neighbours wash their clothes and bedding in her home for a penny a week and showed them how to use chloride of lime. Ten years later, in 1842, a public baths and wash house opened on Upper Frederick Street in Liverpool, and she became its superintendent in 1846.
Why it mattered. Hot water and clean clothes can stop disease, and her work helped start the public wash house movement in Britain.
1890
Dhobi Ghat in Mumbai was built in 1890, when the city was under British rule. Rows of open concrete wash pens each have a flogging stone, where washers called dhobis soak, beat and rinse clothes by hand. It is still working today, and more than 100,000 pieces of clothing are washed there every day.
Why it mattered. Washing by hand with water, soap and muscle is the oldest method of all, and for many people it is still how laundry gets done.
1904 – 1936
Small electric motors take over the hard turning. Agitators swish the clothes, and the first shared laundries open, but someone still has to stand by the machine.
1907
c. 1906–1908
Electric washing machines were advertised in newspapers as early as 1904. The Hurley Machine Company of Chicago made its electric Thor washer from about 1907 and marketed it widely from 1908. The 1900 Washer Company of Binghamton was also making electric washers by 1906 or 1907, and nobody knows who put the very first motor on a washer.
Why it mattered. A small motor did the hours of cranking, and every washing machine since has had one.
1910
9 August 1910
Alva Fisher, an engineer at the Hurley company, received US patent 966,677 for a washing machine driven by an electric motor. Many books say he invented the electric washer. Historians who checked the records point out that electric washers were already on sale before his patent, and that other patents came first.
Why it mattered. A patent is not always proof of who invented something first.
1922
Howard Snyder invented a vaned agitator: a finned post in the middle of the tub that twisted back and forth and pushed water through the clothes. Maytag sold it in the Gyrafoam washer. By 1924, one in every five washing machines sold in America came from Maytag's factory.
Why it mattered. Moving water through clothes, instead of rubbing them, became the heart of the top-loading washer.
1930
Toshiba says it released Japan's first electric washing machines in 1930. The Solar washer was based on the American Thor agitator machine, which had been imported to Japan a few years earlier.
Why it mattered. The electric washer was becoming a global machine, and Japan would later lead the world in making them.
1934
18 April 1934
A shop opened where people could rent electric washing machines by the hour. It had just four machines, and an attendant switched them on because coin slots had not yet arrived. It was called a 'washateria', a mix of washing and cafeteria.
Why it mattered. Families who could not afford a machine could still use one, an idea that became the laundromat and the launderette.
1937 – 1975
Machines fill, wash, rinse and spin on their own. New synthetic detergents clean better, and washing machines spread through American and European homes.
1937
The Bendix Home Laundry was a front-loader with a glass porthole door, a rotating drum and an electric timer that ran the wash, rinse and spin by itself. Its inventors found that at just the right speed the drum lifts clothes and lets them fall back through the water. It had no springs to soak up shaking, so it had to be bolted to the floor to stop it 'walking'.
Why it mattered. For the first time you could load the clothes, set the machine going and walk away.
1946
Procter & Gamble launched Tide in test markets, the first heavy-duty synthetic detergent. Chemist David Byerly had kept working on it quietly after the project was nearly dropped, and found that adding a lot of a 'builder' called sodium tripolyphosphate made it clean far better. By 1949 it was sold across the United States.
Why it mattered. Unlike soap, it did not leave scum in hard water, and it cleaned well in the new automatic machines.
1947
US factories had stopped making washers during the Second World War, but engineers kept designing. In 1947 General Electric introduced its first top-loading automatic model, and many other makers followed in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Why it mattered. The automatic top-loader became the standard American washing machine for decades.
1949
9 May 1949
The first launderette in the United Kingdom opened on Queensway in London. In post-war Britain few homes had a washing machine, so launderettes spread quickly through towns and cities.
Why it mattered. Shared machines let millions of people stop washing by hand long before they could buy their own.
1953
By 1953, sales of automatic washing machines in the United States were higher than sales of wringer washers. In Britain and most of Europe, electric washing machines only became popular in the 1950s, and automatics did not take over in the UK until well into the 1970s.
Why it mattered. Hand-fed wringers slowly gave way to machines that did the whole job.
1957
c. 1957
Hoover had opened a washing machine factory at Merthyr Tydfil in 1948. Its Hoovermatic twin tub had one tub to wash and a second, smaller tub that spun the clothes to throw the water out. Twin tubs were popular in Britain in the 1960s because they were cheaper than automatics.
Why it mattered. The spin dryer replaced the dangerous power wringer, and twin tubs are still sold where water and power are limited.
By the numbers
Washing machines spread through American homes over 50 years. The dip in the 1940s came when factories stopped making washers during the Second World War.
1976 – today
Chips run the cycle, motors drive the drum directly, labels push machines to use less energy and water, and the washing machine reaches homes in India and around the world.
1976
Servis released the Selectronic 301, described as the world's first washing machine run by a microcontroller, a tiny computer chip. Before this, a clockwork-like timer with turning cams switched each part of the cycle on and off.
Why it mattered. Chips let machines sense the load, choose water levels and run gentler or faster programs.
1983
Historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan published More Work for Mother, a history of household technology. She argued that machines like the washer did not simply save time: people began to expect clean clothes far more often, and the work shifted onto mothers and wives.
Why it mattered. It showed that who does the washing is as important a question as how the machine works.
1989
Late 1980s
In the 1980s Indian companies such as Videocon began selling televisions and washing machines to middle-class families buying them for the first time. In 1989 IFB signed an agreement with Bosch-Siemens to make fully automatic washing machines in India. Samsung and LG arrived in the mid-1990s, and cheaper semi-automatic twin tubs and fully automatic machines spread in cities.
Why it mattered. India became one of the world's big washing machine markets, though most homes still wash by hand.
1991
Fisher & Paykel introduced its SmartDrive top-loader, with a brushless electric motor that drove the agitator directly. Electronics made the same motor both wash and spin, so it needed no belt, gearbox or clutch.
Why it mattered. Fewer moving parts meant quieter machines that last longer and waste less energy.
1995
23 May 1995
A European directive required household washing machines to carry an energy label, showing how much electricity and water they use. Shoppers could now compare machines, with A as the best grade.
Why it mattered. Labels pushed makers to build machines that heat less water and use less power.
1997
Clothes washers joined the US ENERGY STAR label in 1997, the same year Maytag launched its Neptune front-loader. The programme says an ENERGY STAR washer today uses about 70% less energy and 75% less water than a standard washer from 20 years earlier.
Why it mattered. Most of a washer's energy goes into heating water, so using less water saves power too.
1998
LG introduced what it calls the world's first clutch-less drum washing machine built with a direct drive motor. The motor sits right on the back of the drum, with no belt in between, and electronics control its speed for washing and spinning.
Why it mattered. Direct drive made front-loaders quieter and more efficient, and it is now common around the world.
2010
c. 2010
India's star labelling programme started in 2006, and washing machines joined it as a voluntary label around 2010, rated from one to five stars. In 2020 the government extended the voluntary phase to 31 December 2021, with plans to make the label compulsory.
Why it mattered. More stars mean less electricity per kilogram of clothes washed, which matters as millions of Indian families buy their first machine.
2010
December 2010
The Swedish doctor and statistician Hans Rosling told how, when he was four, his mother loaded a washing machine for the first time, and his grandmother, who had washed by hand for seven children, asked to push the button herself. He counted about two billion people with washing machines and five billion who still washed by hand. His mother used the free time to take him to the library.
Why it mattered. He called the washing machine one of the greatest inventions of the industrial revolution because it gave women time to read and learn.
2021
2019–2021
India's biggest household survey found that 18% of households owned a washing machine. In cities the figure was about 36%, but in villages it was only 9%. Most families, and mostly women, still wash clothes by hand.
Why it mattered. The washing machine story is not finished: for billions of people, washing day is still hard work.
Did you know?
In 2010 Hans Rosling counted about two billion people with washing machines and five billion who still washed clothes by hand.
The first automatic washing machine, the 1937 Bendix, had no springs to absorb shaking, so it had to be bolted to the floor to stop it walking across the room.
In 2019–21 only 18% of Indian households owned a washing machine: about 36% in cities and 9% in villages.
At Mumbai's Dhobi Ghat, built in 1890, more than 100,000 pieces of clothing are still washed by hand every day.
The first US patent for washing clothes, granted in 1797, burned in the 1836 Patent Office fire, so nobody knows exactly what the machine looked like.
The people
1785 – 1860 · Public health pioneer · Ireland and England
Opened her home and boiler to cholera-hit neighbours and inspired Britain's public wash houses.
1820 – 1894 · Inventor · USA
Patented the Triumph Rotary Washer and showed it at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition.
1857 – 1937 · Manufacturer · USA
Turned a farm machinery firm in Newton, Iowa, into a washing machine giant.
1861 or 1862 – 1947 · Engineer · USA
Designed the Thor electric washer; often wrongly called the inventor of the electric washing machine.
· Inventor · USA
Invented the vaned agitator used in Maytag's 1922 Gyrafoam.
· Engineer · USA
Co-inventor of the Bendix automatic washer's tumbling drum.
· Chemist · USA
Kept working on the formula that became Tide, the first heavy-duty synthetic detergent.
born 1941 · Historian of technology · USA
Showed in More Work for Mother how household machines changed women's work.
1948 – 2017 · Doctor and statistician · Sweden
Called the washing machine the greatest invention of the industrial revolution.
Where it happened
Sources
Dates marked “c.” are approximate, and historians sometimes disagree about who was first. If you spot a mistake, tell us.
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