# Washing machine

> Washing, rinsing and spinning laundry in a drum

- Date: 1677
- Era: Renaissance
- Domain: [Textiles & Everyday Life](https://lastcodex.org/en/domains/everyday/)
- Rebuild stage: IV (Science & industry)
- Difficulty: 4/5
- URL: https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/washing-machine/

A washing machine moves laundry through water and detergent, rinses it and removes much of the water by wringing or spinning. In October 1677 Robert Hooke recorded and drew in his diary a device made by Sir John Hoskins for rinsing fine linen. In January 1752 the London monthly The Gentleman's Magazine printed an illustrated description of a machine for washing linen. In 1765 Gotthard Friedrich Stender, a pastor in Courland, described an English washing tub, and Jacob Christian Schäffer of Regensburg brought out an improved machine the next year. Hand-cranked tubs and drums led to electric machines in the early 20th century and to the automatic drum machine, sold by Bendix from 1937.

![Washing machine · Washing, rinsing and spinning laundry in a drum](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/plate.B0xAY0Gn_Z1AeIRV.webp)

## Legend

1. Perforated stainless steel drum
2. Lifter fixed inside the drum
3. Outer tub that holds the water
4. Spring hanging the tub from the cabinet
5. Damper under the tub
6. Door with its rubber seal

## What it is

A washing machine does the work of the washtub, the washboard and the wringer. It soaks the laundry in water with detergent, keeps it moving so that the water passes through the cloth again and again, drains the dirty water, rinses with clean water and finally squeezes or spins out as much water as it can. In a modern automatic machine a controller opens the water valves, warms the water, runs the motor and the drain pump and times each stage without anyone standing by.

Washing machines come in two main forms. In a front-loader the laundry goes into a drum that turns about a horizontal axis behind a round door. In a top-loader the laundry goes in from above. Older machines were wooden or metal tubs in which a crank or a motor turned paddles, often with a pair of rollers on top to wring the washing.

## How it works

![The inside of a washing machine drum seen through its open round door: a cylinder of stainless steel pierced with many small holes, with three ribs set at equal distances around its wall](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v3.j0OKLRrI_Z10kg9D.webp)
_Inside the drum, three lifters carry the washing up and let it fall back into the water._

The drum of a front-loader is a cylinder of stainless [steel](/en/inventions/steel/) pierced with small holes, set inside a closed tub that holds the water. Ribs called lifters, often three spaced evenly around the wall, carry the laundry up as the drum turns. Near the top it falls back through the water. Lifting, falling and rubbing against the rest of the load push the water through the fibres. The motor turns the drum one way, pauses and turns it the other way, so that the whole load keeps turning over.

The water alone removes little grease. [Soap](/en/inventions/soap/) or a modern detergent surrounds the oily dirt so that the water can carry it off, and warm water helps. An [electric heating element](/en/inventions/electric-heating-element/) in the tub warms the water to the temperature chosen. After washing, a pump empties the tub, clean water rinses the load, and the cycle may repeat.

To finish, the drum turns fast in one direction. The laundry is pressed against the wall, and the water is flung out through the holes into the tub and pumped away. This spin is what leaves the washing damp instead of dripping. A heavy wet load that is not spread evenly makes the drum wobble, so the tub hangs from the cabinet on springs and rests on dampers that absorb the shaking. Heavy counterweights fixed to the tub steady it, and some machines add rings of balls that roll to the light side of the drum.

The machine combines mains electricity, water and a heavy drum turning at speed. Its door locks until the drum has stopped. Never force the door, bypass the lock or open the casing; repairs are work for a qualified technician. Keep young children away from the open door.

## History and evolution

In October 1677 Robert Hooke recorded and drew in his diary a device made by Sir John Hoskins for rinsing fine linen. An English patent granted in 1691 to John Tyzacke covered an engine worked by one or more men, whose listed uses included raising water, washing clothes and pounding minerals and seeds; how it worked is not known. In January 1752 the London monthly _The Gentleman's Magazine_ printed a description and a picture of a machine for washing linen, which it called the Yorkshire Maiden. In 1765 Gotthard Friedrich Stender, a German pastor in Courland, published a description of an English washing machine in a Königsberg newspaper and in a booklet printed at Mitau, today Jelgava in Latvia. It was a closed wooden tub filled with hot soapy water in which the laundry was turned by hand. The Berlin magazine _Berlinisches Magazin_ reprinted his account the following year.

![A wooden washing tub with a lid, standing on short legs on wet flagstones, its staves bound with iron hoops and a crank handle on the lid](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v1.BzA5dJ9E_ZUmdsB.webp)
_In the tub machines of the 18th and 19th centuries, a crank on the lid turned paddles in the hot soapy water._

Jacob Christian Schäffer, a Protestant pastor and naturalist in Regensburg, took up Stender's idea and improved it. His booklet on a "convenient and most advantageous washing machine" was printed in 1766 and presented in February 1767. In his wooden tub a crank moved the laundry with paddles. Tub machines of this kind stayed on sale with little change until the middle of the 19th century. In London in the 1790s, Edward Beetham advertised a "royal patent washing mill" worked by a handle.

Hand-cranked machines were still common around 1900. The Museum of Ethnography in Budapest keeps one made by a Budapest ironmonger that a family used in its kitchen until the 1950s: water heated on the stove was poured over the linen, which was churned by turning the crank.

![An early electric washing machine on a wooden floor: a metal tub on four legs with an electric motor underneath driving it by a belt, and a pair of wringer rollers turned by a crank mounted on top](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v2.D0cmYTnq_ZR8ghJ.webp)
_Many early electric washers kept a wringer: the washing was fed by hand between two rollers._

Electric washing machines were made in large numbers in the United States from the early 20th century. An "Electric Laundress" of about 1912, now in the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland, rocked its copper tub and turned its wringer by electricity. Many kept a wringer on top, through which the washing was fed by hand, like a Thor machine of about 1929 in the Science Museum in London. In 1937 Bendix Home Appliances of South Bend, Indiana, put on the market a domestic machine that washed, rinsed and spun the laundry by itself in a drum loaded from the front.

## Key facts

- Rinsing device of Sir John Hoskins: Recorded and drawn by Robert Hooke, 6 October 1677
- Illustrated washing machine in print: The Gentleman's Magazine, London, January 1752
- Schäffer's washing machine: Regensburg, booklet printed in 1766
- Hand-cranked tub machines: On sale with little change until the mid-19th century
- Automatic washing machine for the home: Bendix, United States, 1937

## Requires

- [Soap](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/soap/): Fat and ash against germs (c. 2,800 BCE)
- [Steel](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/steel/): Iron with just enough carbon (c. 1,000 BCE)

## Sources

- [An 18th-century washing machine (the Yorkshire Maiden, The Gentleman's Magazine, January 1752)](https://blog.nli.org.il/en/washing-machine/), National Library of Israel blog
- [Maiden (Yorkshire maiden, a machine for washing linen, Gentleman's Magazine c. 1752)](https://yorkshiredictionary.york.ac.uk/words/maiden), Yorkshire Historical Dictionary, University of York
- [Edward Beetham, inventor of the washing machine? (1752 advertisement and the Yorkshire Maiden in The Gentleman's Magazine)](https://georgianera.wordpress.com/2021/01/27/edward-beetham-inventor-of-the-washing-machine/), All Things Georgian (S. Lambert and J. Wilkes), 2021
- [Notes and sources for washing machine articles (1691 Tyzacke patent after McKenzie and Bell; Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 22, January 1752)](http://www.oldandinteresting.com/washing-machine-notes.aspx), Old and Interesting
- [G. F. Stender, Die bequeme Waschmaschine, Berlinisches Magazin 3 (1766), reprinting his 1765 description](https://www.literatura.lv/en/works/1354075), literatura.lv, Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, University of Latvia
- [„Regensburger Humboldt“ erfand einst die Waschmaschine (KNA)](https://www.echo24.de/welt/regensburger-humboldt-erfand-einst-die-waschmaschine-zr-94179878.html), echo24, 2025
- [Why it took the washing machine so long to catch on](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-23/why-it-took-the-washing-machine-so-long-to-catch-on), Justin Fox, Bloomberg Opinion, 23 February 2017
- [Wer hat die Waschmaschine erfunden?](https://www.planet-wissen.de/gesellschaft/sauberkeit/waesche_waschen/pwiewissensfrage352.html), Planet Wissen, WDR / SWR
- [Beetham's royal patent washing mill, No. 27 Fleet Street, London (trade card)](https://digital.library.yale.edu/catalog/11135192), Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University
- [By hand or by machine? (hand-cranked washing machine by Geittner and Rausch, Budapest)](https://www.neprajz.hu/en/gyujtemenyek/artefact-of-the-month/2023_08_by-hand-or-by-machine.html), Museum of Ethnography, Budapest
- ["Thor" washing machine, electric, with wringer, c. 1929](https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co48831/thor-washing-machine), Science Museum Group
- [Washing machine, ABC 'Electric Laundress' oscillator with electric wringer, c. 1912](https://collection.motat.org.nz/objects/4482), MOTAT, Museum of Transport and Technology, Auckland
- [Bendix Home Appliances Limited](https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/people/cp990), Science Museum Group
- [Bendix Home Appliances](https://gracesguide.co.uk/Bendix_Home_Appliances), Grace's Guide to British Industrial History
- [US 6,622,530, Suspension mechanism for connecting the moving tub assembly of washing machines with horizontal axis to the fixed body](https://patents.google.com/patent/US6622530), Google Patents
- [EP 0810319 B1, Washing machine (drum, lifters, rotation and spin)](https://patents.google.com/patent/EP0810319B1), European Patent Office / Google Patents
- [Robert Hooke's diary, 6 October 1677, reproduced in Y. Nasifoglu, PhD thesis, figure III-210](https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/downloads/jh343x05x.pdf), McGill University
- [Chi ha inventato la lavatrice?](https://www.focus.it/cultura/storia/chi-ha-inventato-la-lavatrice), Focus

Fact-checked on 2026-10-19.

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