5 ms·

See also this TED talk by the late Hans Rosling: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_magic_washing_machine https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_ma

See also this TED talk by the late Hans Rosling: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_magic_washing_machine https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_magic_washing_mac... Traditional washing, by beating cloth on stones beside a river, can take 10-20 person-hours a week for a family's worth of linens (and that's assuming the same clothing is worn day-in, day-out, between weekly washes): it's a horribly inefficient chore than amounts to manual labour, and because it's usually left to women it's one that policy-makers and development economists overlook or discount. Automating it could potentially free up enough time to provide extra years of education, or to increase available worker-hours in an economy by 10%. But if you can't provide everyone with automatic washer/driers, something like this is still a huge improvement.

elzbardico 5y ago
Freeing people from this chore probably would help families to grow more food.
mhh__ 5y ago
His death was a real loss to the world, I think.
jacquesm 5y ago
And that method wears out the fabric pretty rapidly compared to a washer.
- cstross 5y ago
  It's worth looking into the history of textile production prior to the invention of the spinning jenny and the industrial revolution (the first impact of which was to trigger an exponential drop in the cost of cloth). From a modern perspective it was just jaw-droppingly labour-intensive -- and so was the process of turning it into garments. (Which is still primarily manual, albeit using machines that can sew seams in minutes that formerly took days of hand-stitching.) A good rule of thumb is that prior to the 19th century, a suit of clothes (mens or womens) was the equivalent of an automobile today in terms of status and ownership/maintenance costs as a proportion of income. Used garments were handed down, then dismantled and recycled as fabric for simpler/smaller clothing, and ultimately ended up as rags (which could be used for cleaning, paper-making, menstrual pads), still valuable in their own right ...

elzbardico 5y ago

Freeing people from this chore probably would help families to grow more food.

mhh__ 5y ago

His death was a real loss to the world, I think.

jacquesm 5y ago

And that method wears out the fabric pretty rapidly compared to a washer.

cstross 5y ago
It's worth looking into the history of textile production prior to the invention of the spinning jenny and the industrial revolution (the first impact of which was to trigger an exponential drop in the cost of cloth). From a modern perspective it was just jaw-droppingly labour-intensive -- and so was the process of turning it into garments. (Which is still primarily manual, albeit using machines that can sew seams in minutes that formerly took days of hand-stitching.) A good rule of thumb is that prior to the 19th century, a suit of clothes (mens or womens) was the equivalent of an automobile today in terms of status and ownership/maintenance costs as a proportion of income. Used garments were handed down, then dismantled and recycled as fabric for simpler/smaller clothing, and ultimately ended up as rags (which could be used for cleaning, paper-making, menstrual pads), still valuable in their own right ...