3 ms·
What, from people falling into the river and drowning? Seems like me that an electrical fire from a washing machine is about as likely.
by Doxin 8y ago
What, from people falling into the river and drowning? Seems like me that an electrical fire from a washing machine is about as likely.
- JohnFen 8y agoThis is actually a really interesting topic. So interesting that at least one book was written on it (called "Save Women's Lives: The History of the Washing Machine"). The tl;dr version is this: doing laundry entirely by hand involves a high level of physical exertion, most of it highly repetitive and crouched over in an unnatural manner for a substantial amount of time. This alone caused a great deal of physical injury and deformity, sometimes leading directly to death. The washing machine itself was not really invented as a time-saving device. It was invented primarily to make doing laundry less physically harmful. Any time savings was just gravy. It is commonly held by researchers that the washing machine (we're not even talking about electric or automatic washing machines here) is one of the top 10 most important inventions in terms of impact on health and longevity.