E nter electricity, and suddenly, laundry found itself throughly modernized. The wringer washer became the rage, a machine which not only washed , but, with the aid of two fixed rollers, also squeezed the excess water from the laundry. In spite of the Great Depression, by 1936, over 1.4 million washing machines were sold in America. With the invention of the spin cycle, the wringer washer became obsolete. Now there was a machine which would not only wash and rinse, but it could spin out the excess water, a whole load at a time.
Progress is indeed a beautiful thing.
T he new machines, however much improved they may have been, were expensive. The answer was the coin operated laundromat, or Washiteria. Enterprising buisnessmen would buy rows of the new machines which were made available for use by all for as little as 10 cents a load. Even with multiple machines, doing the family's wash took several hours, and the local washiteria became a kind of social center. Friends did their laundry on the same day in order to visit and pass the time.