It’s hard to believe that we used to use these…
…to wash our laundry. Believed to be originally from Scandinavia, they were made out of wood. In 1833, a man named Stephen Rust patented the “Wash Board”, which had both a wooden frame and a piece of “fluted tin, sheet iron, copper or zinc”
Changes would follow, as would other patents. The addition of a rubber coating was patented in 1842, followed, and perhaps and answer to the rubber coating, by an “improved” zinc washboard” in 1845. There is an assumption that glass washboards were in use before 1877 when Herman Liebmann patented his concept of using glass, porcelain, or terra cotta to improve washboards. (When, 2015)
So how did we go from the simple, hand scrubbing technique to today’s high tech computer operated washing machines?
