My father bought a USED GE hot water tank in 1953. That tank heated water for our family of six till my mother passed away in 2003. The house was sold a couple times and in 2017 I was driving past the house and decided to stop and talk with the current owners. To my utter surprise when I mentioned the water tank they told me they just replaced it 5hat CURRENT WEEK!!! They actually took me down to the basement and there it sat,too big to be removed. And the thing was, that tank heated water too an almost dangerous level and we never ran our of hot water, The current residents said they were afraid to try and adjust the temperature because the tank was so old. AND IT WAS PURCHAS3D USED 64 YEARS AGO!!!!
A level of durability now long gone. If you can get 10 years out of any major appliance nowadays, you're lucky. Even if the machinery is okay, the @#%*! computer board dies, and (naturally) is either no longer available or prohibitively expensive when labor is included.
@@Philflash Broken down, clogged, water heaters are a bitch to move more than a few feet, draining only reduces the tonnage by a negligible amount - even after drilling holes all over, plus the worthless valve open...and generally they're in the damn basement, which means stairs folks...friends all have something to do, can't make it..cutting a round tank with a sawzall is possible, but a dangerous, toxic mess - inside yer house. So, if there's room right there it starts to look like a good idea. The kind of project tailor-made for a beer commercial, in other words. 🍻
I remember the stink that led to that redesign! It wasn't that kids got trapped inside in the home; it was that kids found them tossed in the junk yard, & got trapped inside. Which led to tragedies.
Indeed. Numerous deaths occurred from such refrigerators which forced a redesign in 1958, which seems rather early IMO. I have often wondered if some famous person or politician lost a child to one of those death traps, resulting in the new magnetic closure mechanism...?
@@NipkowDisk the crazy thing is that many of these refrigerators were still alive and well long after they stopped making them and were discarded only because many of the new refrigerators had a separate, larger freezer compartment. But they were still working when they were taken out of service.
Even today, the metaphor "put [someone] through the wringer" survives as a holdover from the days of the old-style wringer washers. Today, it means to make someone's life difficult.
Also the old saying getting your tit in the wringer lol my mom told me about a neighbor when she young that was very large and that really happened to her ! Luck she hit the safety and it reversed !
@@653j521 they had a wide lever across the top that when struck opened it up a bit and you could also reverse it . I have one out in the shop that was a neighbors that still used it till they passed away had fitted a electric motor on it and it still has a small kick start gas engine to run it if you did not have electricity and make 110 volts AC to power your iron .
As a child, I remember "helping" my mother run the wringer washer. There was always a bar or large button on the top of the wringer that released all the pressure. Not a problem.
The other potentially dangerous appliance was the old-style pressure cooker with the noisy pressure regulator and no safety release. A woman up our street got wicked steam burns for opening hers too quickly.
Yup, agree. A neighbor had the pressure regulator plug up and the safety pressure release also didn't blow. The lid blew off and hot food splattered all over the kitchen. Thankfully no people or pets were in the kitchen so it was only a big mess to clean up.
@@xlerb2286 After all, it was two stove-top pressure cookers that the Boston Marathon bombers used to blow up the finish line, kill three people, dismember 17 people, and injure hundreds more. The old-style pressure cookers had a safety valve made of metal and hard rubber, but the rubber part of the plug could harden with age. (It was a natural product.) The safety valve could get clogged with food, if not properly cleaned. The rubber gasket sealing the lid had to be replaced from time to time as well. A fairly fool-proof technology, if respected and properly maintained.
@@williamdonahue6617 yeah but they didn't pressurize theirs , they used them due to the convenience of the size of them and that they had a handle for carrying . The fact that the thick wall construction created an almost perfect shrapnel was a bonus in their twisted minds .
my mom got a used ringer washer when I was a kid in the 70's. Yes, I got my fingers stuck in the rubber rollers. I learned real quick to not do that again.
My mom had one in the '50s. I remember accidently 'wringed' a time or two, it was my job to feed the clothes into it. I was around 8-9 at the time. But our washer, a Maytag I think, had a automatic latch that would pop the wringers open if you or too many clothes got into them. Saved me from serious harm, I reckon. It also had it's own agitator in the tub. There was a "gear shift" lever on the side to engage or disengage it. It was a huge help to my mom, who up till then used a glass wood-framed scrub board to wash clothes. That was work!
Refrigerators at one time had mechanical door latches that would trap and suffocate kids if they get inside and unable to open the door, the magnetic door closures now don’t allow that to happen
🎉retro greetings from coastal Mississippi. My granny had a ringer washer up till mid 70's. My parents had a General Electric refrigerator bought in 1964 and it lasted 40 years 😂 Ah sweet memories of by gone days❤
Grew up in the 60's and 70's using all of these items. Even as small children we knew not to put things in the toaster or they'd catch on fire. We used the indoor incinerator (natural gas fed and properly vented to a chimney) daily and never had any issues with it. My grandfather gave us an old wringer washer like the ones in this video, and we never once caught our fingers in the rollers and suffered amputations! Besides, they were hand-cranked. If you did start to get your fingers caught in the rollers, you just stopped cranking and reversed the direction of cranking and the problem is solved.
@@kirdot2011 Out of all the Appliance"s i will have to say and a REALLY BAD IDEA is the TRASH BURNER can you just imagine throwing a few aerosol cans into the trash burner can you say MINI HAND GERNADE or a piece of clothing with Human POO WOW the smell will blow your mind and your neighbors would just love the SMELL LOL .. but the sad part was the Trash Burners were also used as Crematoriums no BS there
@@kirdot2011 It was just a natural gas burner at the bottom of a refractory (fire brick) lined metal case. You put the day's trash in there and set the timer and walk away. Ours was in the cellar and vented into the chimney. Worked great! Then, the city passed ordinances against burning trash and that was the end of that.
I've been around since 1952. I never heard of an indoor incinerator. We had an I-H refrigerator that was new in 1951 and used freon. I even used it in my first house - it was 40 years old when I gave it to someone else to use. It worked as good as the day it was made. It just wasn't self-defrosting and had a mechanical door latch that are now banned. Mom's first washer was a ringer washer, not sure of the brand, but it had a timed agitation cycle and a power "safety" wringer that would pop-up and disengage if something too thick was put thru it. The biggest thing I remember about our old toaster was that it wasn't insulated and would burn your fingers if you touched the outside of it when in use. The insulated toasters probably had way more asbestos in them than any hair dryer ever did.
We got an International Harvester fridge used in 1957. It might have been the same model. I ended up with it. It was an anti-planned obsolescence device; lasted until about 6 years ago (2017) when, through my neglect, the frame holding the compressor on finally rusted through, pinching off the refrigerant line. I loved that old I-H fridge, replaced broken door handle and all!
My grandma had an old Matag wringer washer. She handed down to my mother who handed down to me. Things were made so much better then. Now things are built to break down in ten years.
My grandma used her 50’s fridge and freezer until the 90’s. They still worked, but the utility company was giving rebates for upgrading to energy efficient ones. There’s an 80’s hairdryer at my parent’s house that doesn’t have a GFCI 🔌 to prevent electric shock because those weren’t required until early 90’s. No one uses it anymore but won’t throw it out.
Done some research and it was Jan 1991 when UL required ALCI plugs (appliance leakage circuit interrupter, same principle as GFCI ) on the cords of hair dryers to reduce the risk of electrocution should the dryer fall into a sink or bathtub while plugged in, whether or not the bathroom has GFCI outlets or protected by a GFCI circuit breaker at the panel , GFCI protection for bathrooms has been required since the 1975, but even today you might come across older homes without GFCIs. Studies by the consumer product safety commission during the 1980s found a disproportionately high number of electrocutions from hairdryers, and finally in 1991 when manufacturers were required to have the safety plug to obtain the UL listing the number of incidents fell sharply in the coming years. As an electrician myself yes, some code changes can seem excessive and making my work more difficult and/or expensive, but they were more than likely written in blood and I'm all for making things safer and more reliable.
The funny thing is that while her new refrigerator is more efficient than one made in the late 70’s and 80’s, Her old 50s era refrigerator was probably more efficient than the one she replaced it with. Why? It’s because the frost free function uses the extra power because it has a blower motor inside and a heating element that operates periodically to automatically defrost it. Some also have a heating elements where the door gasket contacts the refrigerator. 😂
@@dmandman9 And the reason they don't last as long is all the gadgets people buy included, from ice makers to electronics. The refrigerators that last the longest have the freezer compartment on top and no gadgets.
5:00 darn it kids close the damn fridge! ;) That home incinerator was the biggest surprise, I knew large apartment buildings in big cities often had a chute and an incinerator but never knew they had a purpose built device in the home.
Because Lawd's, as we all know, we's uneducated moaxes was way too stupid to know better, at least according to todays Hadvad and MIT college grads who know's how to cipher.
We used wringer washers at home for years. I’d never heard of or seen one that you had to stir with a stick. Ours had agitators much like today’s washers. You did have to make sure everything was clear when you unhooked it to release the water into the floor drain. The worst part of the wringers was they had a bad tendency to mangle zippers.
@jamesmelch. You're right. My wringers would break the tang off the zipper on a perfectly good pair of jeans. I use cheap used automatics since 35 years ago. I have three hooked up. If one quits I still have two good ones. People trade in perfectly good used ones so I get them for 40-50 dollars and get 5-24 years of use.
Ours had an agitator but I remember my mother using a stick to move the clothes around a bit. Those machines cleaned well but took a lot of our time to do all of the rinsing, etc. I did enjoy running the clothes through the wringer, always remembering to fold the clothes so the buttons were well inside so as not to break. Later when I moved in with roommates they had to show me how to use the automatic washer and dryer.
My parents’ still have a washing machine in their cellar like the ones in this video. It’s never been able to be removed because of its weight and size. And wouldn’t fit through the stairway and door. It was placed there while the house was being built. So there it rots. Cool piece of history. (I’ve never seen it ever to be used)
I was born in the 1950's and we had a gas stove that at times could be dangerous as you had to light the oven with a kitchen match . The bottom part of the stove was the broiler and it was easier to light the oven by opening the broiler door and lighting the burner above . The top burners had a constant burning pilot light .My parents taught me how to be safe around natural gas .
we had a wringer washer when I was a kid but the wringer part was able to be turned on and not cranked by hand. My hair got caught in the wringer and unfortunately my dad had to cut it to get me unstuck. I went from having waist length hair to having hair somewhere in the middle of my back
My grandmothers had wringer washers as late as the early 70s. I was surprised about asbestos in hair blowers. It was fun to see Farrah Fawcett and Anglea Cartright (Penny) in a commercial together. The indoor incinerator was a big surprise too. I forgot about the gasses used back in the days of early refrigeration. The freons used today have so little cooling power they have to make them run longer and insulate more making them big on the outside and smaller on the inside.
When I lived in San Francisco, I found a wringer-washer in near mint condition on the street awaiting garbage pickup. I must have looked like a total nut wheeling that thing up and over the city hills at midnight, but it was worth it. Being able to do laundry in your own apartment is a rare blessing in that city.
My mom used a wringer washer for years. It got our clothes cleaner than using a more modern one. In fact my dad went to an auction and bought another one when the first one quit. Our automatic washer was barely used.
1:48 My family had a Wringer Washer back in the late 60's, early 70's. When my little brother was around 6 or so, he decided he was going to "Help" my mother do the laundry. He wound up getting his arm caught in the wringer and it pulled him in all the way to his armpit. He had broke every single bone from his fingertips up to his armpit. He was casted for almost 4 months. Fortunately, there was no permanent damage and after the cast came off plus a little recuperation time, you couldn't tell anything ever happened.
Growing up in the “sticks” my family had a trash burner - a 55 gallon steel drum in the back yard. Finally the area suburbanized enough to get street addresses (replaced “Rural Delivery”) for mail and garbage pickup.
When I was a young kid, my family had a very old electric toaster. It wasn't a pop-up toaster. Instead, there was a hinged door on the side. You put the toast in and physically took it out when it was done. The problem was that the heated wires that did the toasting were completely exposed once the hinged door was opened. If you accidentally touched one of the wires with your fingers, you could get burned or electrocuted.
I've seen little tongs made of carved wood you could use to remove the toast. Wood doesn't conduct electricity and they kept your hands away from the coils.
My family's first toaster oven was like that. Easily accessible heating elements that glowed red when hot. Even as kids, we knew to NOT touch them! So many of these devices are perfectly safe if we exercise our common sense. Stupidity could be painful, as it should be.
We used to have a trash burner - it was awesome! Ours was not gas - you lit it with a match, it was in the basement and was vented to the outside. They were outlawed in the 70s sometime. Those fridges lasted forever - 30-40 years. Today you are lucky to go more than 5 years without having to replace one. My mom had that exact portable hairdryer!!! Used it for decades with zero negative effects.
Everybody living on the outskirts of Los Angeles had an incinerator in the back yard. Ours was concrete. Sone things my dad burned put out thick black smoke. As a kid, I remember him saying ''Don't breathe that. Its no good for you.'' Every lumberyard had a big steel cone shaped burner with a curved mesh spark screen on top. The one near us was about 15 feet wide and maybe 20 feet tall.
I remember on the news that some guy had been developing film in an older building. And he noticed tiny specks on his photos. Turned out it was asbestos. Then they started to find out that that was in so many old school ceilings and was dangerous.I remember this from the late 70s, or early 80s.
Too much exaggerated hype on abestos dangers. I don't know ANY mechanics that had lung problems because they installed brake shoes that had asbestos in them. This is in 53 years of my having been in the car repair business.
I remember as a little kid, I'm going back to when I was 4 or 5, my mom had an "old fashioned" ringer washer in the "out-kitchen" which is what mud rooms were called back in the stone age...
I never saw one of the gas-fired indoor trash burners, but I do remember having an "incinerator" in the back yard. This was basically a concrete box with a hinged metal lid and some vents in the bottom that was used for burning paper trash. You'd just dump the trash in it, toss in a match, and let it burn the paper to ash. Eventually the city banned trash burning to reduce air pollution.
My home property still has the "burn pit" my late Dad built back in the early 1970s, similar concrete box with fence wire over the top to catch larger embers, and a sliding door on one side to rake out ashes. I no longer have a water hose and faucet out there to use in case an ember gets loose and starts a yard fire, so I don't use it.
Thank you for sharing these memories; and you have an effective voice that provides the viewers with delightful perspectives within your narrative. One thing I do want to point out is, wringer washers weren't a mainstay of the 1950s and 1960s--from my experience of growing up during that time (born in 1948) That style of washer was popular prior to, at least, the mid-1950s, but it was certainly popular and in widespread use during the 1930s and '40s. In our home, in the 1950s and '60s, we had washers and dryers that look pretty much like what today offers consumers on the showroom floor.
I'm 71. Our family had several wringer washing machines and I LOVED using them! Squeezing wet clothes through the wringer made a mess, which is fun for a boy. BTW, they weren't as dangerous as this video says - When the wringer jammed, it would pop open.
Back in the 50's we had ringer washerbone day my younger sister poked a stick horse int the rollers. It went in until the ringers popped open. No one was hurt but the horse had funny spiral marks on it. My sister got into so much trouble.😊
You left out the fridge that used ammonia gas for a refrigerant. We had a ringer washer in our old house in the 50s we used to play with it, we never got more than a pinch because you were the one turning the crank. When I was little my mother said what all parents should have said, unplug it before sticking anything thing in the toaster other than bread.
Personally, I have never understood what the problem is with ammonia as a refrigerant. It even releases a very distinct odor from the tiniest of leaks, alerting the user service is needed.
I don't know what you consider to be modern as far as toasters are concerned, but I have a 1925 Toastmaster single slice toaster that I think is perfectly safe...except for the cloth covered power cord. And it toasts reasonably well.
We had one of those washers when I was a child. My mother kept it until around 1990 when she moved into a smaller single level house. No one would move it for her. We also had a weird toaster. The sides of the toaster flipped down. I think it was called a drop side electric toaster. It is the only one that I have ever seen.
Ammonia is still used in commercial and industrial refrigeration, which can be smelled before it reaches hazardous concentrations. The most shocking one to me was the indoor garbage burner. Speed Queen was another brand of wringer washer. My mother used one for years.
Got news - Those radiant control Sunbeam toasters are great - I have one sitting on my kitchen counter right now. Just drop in the bread and it lowers itself into the toaster; when it's done, it silently comes back up fully toasted. We tried a new toaster a few years ago, and it was so slow, we went right back to the sunbeam. Mine is probably 60 years old and works just fine...
Ammonia is still used today in RV refrigerators, my parents have one that came with their camper (camper is not even a whole year old, so not antique) and it even has the latching doors (needed so they stay close during transport of the camper). There’s actually a reason for this…adaptability… See, refrigerators that utilize ammonia do so by boiling water which releases the gas which then flows through the system on its own to then mix back into the water at the end…then rinse and repeat. That means no need for a compressor which also means no need for electric. These refrigerators can run on propane gas just as easily as their default electric heating element. Yes…they use HEAT to produce COLD, imagine that conundrum. Someone really should make a video about these (looking at you Technology Connections 😅). But I digress. All of this oddly backwards sounding yet effective heated cold…hot-for-cold…chilled heat(?)…anyway, what all of this weird nonsense that oddly makes sense does is make it so you can be camping on the middle of the deepest woods, with no electric connection for miles, no charge on battery with it being midnight with a new moon and so long as you have propane, your refrigerator will still keeping your cold food items chilling like a villain who’s just found himself stranded at the South Pole with zero issues. Quite interesting to see what outdated tech one can find in a modern RV…😅
I had never heard of those garbage burners before. When the model first dropped the bag in, I thought, Trash Compactor. It's too bad that asbestos is damaging to living things, it really is amazingly fire proof. People forget, that it really did what they claimed.
My mother had a wringer washing machine. It had a safety release button you could press to release the rollers. The problem was that this button was on the wrong side. Mum would only wash when we were home. If we heard a yell we'd go and press the release button. Those machines were lethal.
The “indoor garbage burner,” aka incinerator. My grandparents built their home in ‘53 and had one in the basement. It’s still there, to this day. I had fun throwing old paper in it to burn as a kid
I got my arm caught in the washer ringer when I was about five. Mom started to try and reverse the rollers, but couldn't make it work. My dad walked over and simply unlatched the rollers setting me free. I don't know how common this style was, but I liked it. 😁
My great grandmother had a gas refrigerator and when I was 12 we moved from a large city to the country and the people we bought our house from had a refrigerator that ran on propane. We used it until our electric refrigerator was moved. Because they weren’t electric there was no light in the refrigerator.
Mother had a wringer washer until 1970, when Dad got her an automatic. For the longest time, she hated the automatic because it didn't get the clothes as clean. (Science has proven her right. Automatic machines used 9 Flux of water, while the wringers used 23 fluxes.) She never got her fingers caught in the wringer, but Granny did once.
With regard to refrigerants before sulfur dioxide pure amonia was used, also the "safer" refrigerant was freon which was safer for handling but nearly destroyed the ozone layer.
The wedding gift my mon & dad gave my uncle & bride when they were married in 1973 was a toaster. The toaster had a slide vs a dial to regulate time. But what made this toaster so great is that it not not still sits on their kitchen counter, but that it still works great & looks brand new.
I never knew about the in home burners. We had a second hand wringer washer, never got my fingers caught in between the rollers as mom never let us close as she was washing the ❤clothes.
That's where the danger LAY. You're welcome. There was considerably less danger with the hand operated wringer than with the more "modern" electric powered wringer. Even then, they eventually made them with a safety device that would stop the motor somehow if your hand got caught in it.
I remember the ringer washers, we had one until the early 70s, never had a problem. I still have a 70s hair dryer and we had a late 50s refrigerator that we put in our basement and continued to use after we got a new one in the late 60s. It lasted into the early 2000s.
In the greater Los Angeles area during the 1950s we had back yard incinerators, never in the house. They were banned October 1957 because of their contribution to air pollution
I remember a Great Aunt who lived in a apartment building in Los Angeles. We visited when I was a little girl in the mid-“60’s and I was fascinated by the shoot where you’d drop the garbage to be burned. Apparently not all incinerators had been banned.
My parents had pretty much all of those items. several of them being the exact items shown in the video. Even the garbage burner, though I never saw them use it. Many of the wringer washers had a release lever on top that would take the pressure off the rollers but in a panic you could do some damage before managing to use the release lever.
I've never used or been around a wringer washer, but they sound so much more reliable than an automatic machine. If I could find one with a manually operated wringer, I would seriously consider getting it as a backup to my current machine.
@@karinwolf3645 A friend of mine's family during the '70s had a trash compactor (not burner) in their kitchen. I never knew about trash burners though, until I saw this video.
Wringer washers were invented in the 1880s, not the 1950s. That said, my grandmother got her boobs caught in the wringer. My mother got her hands caught TWICE. I was taught how to use the wringer washer at about age 10. I used a broom handle to stuff the wringer.
The MANUAL Ringer washers where OK. That is, those where the rollers where hand crank activated. The problem really started when the motorized ones where introduced... A LOT of peoples lost a arm to those. Sulphur dioxide turns into sulphuric acid when exposed to water. Inhaling it mean that sulphuric acid is made from your nose and all the way to inside the lungs.
We had a Maytag wringer washer in our kitchen when I was young. I helped with the laundry and knew enough to keep my fingers away from the wringers. Our dryer was the clotheslines outside! I’ve used plenty of blow dryers, and am now 73, no asbestosis. I don’t remember the home incinerator or the toaster!
HEY HEY …I USED THAT UP TO 1964 ..IT WORKED GREAT !!!!!!! The alliance vented as a fireplace did.. and we had two great fireplaces in our home … RINGER WASHERS WETE GREAT TO .. I used them at 10yrs old .. 70 years ago !!!!
Something gladfully gone are refridgerators with heavy door latches that closed with a ker-CHUNK. They could not be opened from the inside and trapped many a young child playing "fort" with a junked one outside.
An elderly couple had a junk 1950s era fridge that sat outside their house for many years. The lady in her 90s told me the city required that the door be removed to prevent kids getting trapped inside. In 2013, after she went into assisted living, I hauled the fridge to our local Goodwill, which at the time accepted scrap major appliances.
Regarding the need for an indoor incinerator, it might be needed because they don't pick up burnable trash. I'm 72 and in L.A. they didn't pick burnable trash. So, every home and apt building had an outdoor incinerator until aground 1960/61 when all trash was picked up. Now imagine a city as big as L.A. burning trash. It was a horrible choking eye burning smog. Sometimes we weren't allowed outside for recess.
That Maytag was a Saturday morning chore at my grandmother's house and I helped her from the time I was little. I knew better than to get anywhere near those rollers. But one time I put a small boat in the agitating water to see if it would float. It didn't. We later found it in my grandfathers's long johns,, Unfortunately it was AFTER the long johns went through the wringer and we heard the crunch of plastic. Gramps was pickng pieces of plastic out of his keester for the whole of the next week. My cousin Marion did get herr hands caught in the rollers right up to her elbows. There was a latch at the top of the ringer that would separate the rollers if that happened. But she ad BOTH arms caught. Luckily my grandmother caught it and she was not badly hurt, just scared. As to the washer you had to add HOT water to the machine because the machine had no way to heat it.. Grandmother heated two buckets of water on the stove and used two more to rinse the clothes. Also there was no stick used in the electric washers as they had an agitator that was powered.It would swish back and forth to agitate the clothes and would give your hand a good smack when you reached to put clothes in the ringer or went to untangle them.
None of this was surprising to me. Actually, those wringer washers had vertical agitators. My grandmother had one in her basement. Toasters had been invented around the turn of the 20th century, but became popular in the 1920s, according to two sources.
Wow! My mom had wringer luckily , never got caught in one. I still have a hair dryer with asbestos in it. I quit using it when the warning came out (1978?). It's a Sears. We also had a Sunbeam automatic toaster from 1953 that lowered and raised the bread slowly.
Don't forget how refrigerators before 1958 could cause one to get trapped inside and suffocate to death. And going really far back were those x-ray shoe sizers where you put your foot inside and with the x-ray it was supposed to give a more precise fit. But in the early days of x-ray usage it wasn't fully realized just how dangerous they can be if they are misused.
I never heard of the Garbage burner and I am 72. I lived through that era. I did wash in a wringer washer for the family starting around age 10 until we got an automatic washer just after my mom and dad split up in the early 70s.
When I was a child, I was "helping " my grandmother do the laundry. She had an electric ringer washer. I was feeding the laundry into the ringer when my whole arm was pulled in along with the laundry. Two things saved me from harm: one, my grandmother quickly unplugged the washer to stop the pulling, and two, the rollers were spring-loaded, so the pressure on my arm was not extreme. It was more frightening than hurting. My other grandmother lived on a farm with no electricity, so she had a hand cranked ringer washer. On the porch to let the water empty into the yard (no indoor plumbing)
My mom had a mangle. You never hear about them. You sat in front of it and it had an electrically heated cloth covered roller that was about 8 inches in diameter and maybe 32 inches wide. There was a curved steel spring loaded follower plate that covered part of the roller. It took the place of an ironing board. There was a 3 inch diameter rubber knob that you banged with your knee to reverse the roller direction to make multiple passes. I can still hear its sounds when my mom operated it. That was in the early 1960's. It was old when my dad brought it home. It didn't work as the cloth braided electrical cord was shorted out so Pop installed a new cord for her.
"Convenience was highly valued in those times"!?!?! Heck today the act of opening a box of cereal, pouring in milk and the putting the milk back in the fridge and the cereal away is about 4 more steps than Gen X is capable of doing. Forget about making coffee!
We had a mangle. It was sort of a large automated iron. You had to feed stuff into the right position. It was easy to get a bad burn. I also ran my hand through a wringer . No major damage.
Not an appliance but those old Lane cedar chests and other brands were impossible to get out once the lid closed. It’s advisable if you have one to remove the mechanism. Too many children have suffocated while playing hide and seek.
When I was in the fourth grade, I was at my aunts house. She owned a laundromat and had several wringer machines. my cousin and I were doing some laundry for her. My fingers got stuck between the wringers, and it took my arm clear up to my elbow. I had to have two surgeries on my arm to remove the burnt tissue and replace that with a skin graph taken from my abdomen. A very scary time for young eight year old. I’m now 71 and I still have the scar to prove it.
The incinerators were vented into the chimney can’t see how the fumes got into the house .I still have a old wringer washer they have a safety release on them to stop and reverse the rollers . toasters are still built the same way only the outer case does not get as hot as the old ones common sense is what people had back then it’s a rare thing now days. Even the refrigerant in my new refrigerator is a new type that is flammable ! The old R 22 was not !
I'm sure someone else has said it, I hope, but ringer washers were not manual in terms of cranking the rollers and that's what made them dangerous. The rollers were motorized. You had to squeeze the clothes down to feed a tongue of clothes into them and then guide as they dragged the clothing and sometimes your hands. The ones I remember from my youth had an emergency released that you could hammer on that released one end of the rollers.
Umm, newer fridges aren't necessarily safer. As the various Freon formulas are being forcibly phased out, manufacturers have now turned to "R290" which is non-odorized PROPANE! Which is extremely flammable. Some progress, eh?
There is only a few ounces of refrigerant in refrigerators and almost always leaks out at a very slow rate. One freezer I charged in 1977 only required 3 1/2 ounces of R22. I quickly went back to vehicle A.C. repair as the volume of refrigerant was 8 to 10 times as much and leaks could be found easier and they had a larger reserve amount of freon to keep working with.
My mom was using her wringer when my then-toddler brother stuck his arm in. She watched in horror as his little hand came out the other side. She laughed at her own reaction, which was to totally forget the thing had an emergency release. She just reverse cranked his arm back out. Thankfully, she had been wringing thick bath towels, so no harm done.
Another thing about old toasters, is the outer shell got too hot to touch when in use, and for minutes afterwards. Modern toasters have an extra insulating layer, so the shell won't burn you. As for the burner, in the 1960s, in the Los Angeles area, we had incinerators in the back yard, for burning garbage. Their use had been outlawed by the late 1950s, but many still remained, and only were removed at a slow rate.
Wringer washing machines were abundant when I was a child. I don't recall ever seeing one where you would have to agitate the clothes with a length of timber. They all had agitators built in.
How many people got shocked because they were foolish enough to remove a slice of bread from a toaster with a metal fork? No warning labels on them I bet.
My mother had a washer like that and never had any trouble. Never heard of anybody dying from SO2 in a fridge, from asbestos in a hair dryer, or bread in a toaster. The words Nanny State ring a bell here?
Mom had wringer washers for quite a while. When she got her first automatic, she very disappointed with how the clothes were never as clean. Don't know why you had to stir the clothes with a stick? We must have been "uppity" because mom had agitator. My brother move in down the street and had a wringer washer. Mom said she was always embarrassed because my brothers laundry was always cleaner than hers! The clothes line tells all!
@markreets. The stick was for pushing clothing into the water quicker and for getting clothing, socks, etc. out of the water without sticking an arm into sometimes overly warm water.
When commenting on the old toasters, you should have shown the models that were unsafe, not the ones that you did - those were the modern ones. I remember the old ones and actually got burnt on them once. They were actually as you said - the heating elements fully exposed to the touch. They were unbelievably dangerous.
My father bought a USED GE hot water tank in 1953. That tank heated water for our family of six till my mother passed away in 2003. The house was sold a couple times and in 2017 I was driving past the house and decided to stop and talk with the current owners. To my utter surprise when I mentioned the water tank they told me they just replaced it 5hat CURRENT WEEK!!! They actually took me down to the basement and there it sat,too big to be removed. And the thing was, that tank heated water too an almost dangerous level and we never ran our of hot water, The current residents said they were afraid to try and adjust the temperature because the tank was so old. AND IT WAS PURCHAS3D USED 64 YEARS AGO!!!!
A level of durability now long gone. If you can get 10 years out of any major appliance nowadays, you're lucky. Even if the machinery is okay, the @#%*! computer board dies, and (naturally) is either no longer available or prohibitively expensive when labor is included.
I guess they need to cut up the tank to get it out.
@@Philflash Broken down, clogged, water heaters are a bitch to move more than a few feet, draining only reduces the tonnage by a negligible amount - even after drilling holes all over, plus the worthless valve open...and generally they're in the damn basement, which means stairs folks...friends all have something to do, can't make it..cutting a round tank with a sawzall is possible, but a dangerous, toxic mess - inside yer house. So, if there's room right there it starts to look like a good idea. The kind of project tailor-made for a beer commercial, in other words. 🍻
Same deal with a broken water softener full of partially liquefied salt. Worse, actually.
My house was built in 1972 I replaced my water heater “ Montgomery Wards” in 2014.
The latching doors on refrigerators also posed a hazard, since they couldn't be opened from the inside, if a child got shut in.
I remember the stink that led to that redesign! It wasn't that kids got trapped inside in the home; it was that kids found them tossed in the junk yard, & got trapped inside. Which led to tragedies.
Indeed. Numerous deaths occurred from such refrigerators which forced a redesign in 1958, which seems rather early IMO. I have often wondered if some famous person or politician lost a child to one of those death traps, resulting in the new magnetic closure mechanism...?
@@NipkowDisk the crazy thing is that many of these refrigerators were still alive and well long after they stopped making them and were discarded only because many of the new refrigerators had a separate, larger freezer compartment. But they were still working when they were taken out of service.
That was their worst feature, yes.
I remember those. Fortunately, I never had the chance to get trapped in one.
Man I am getting old. I grew up with these appliances and remember then quite well.
You and me are on the same boat! But isn't it fun to reminisce
Even today, the metaphor "put [someone] through the wringer" survives as a holdover from the days of the old-style wringer washers. Today, it means to make someone's life difficult.
Also the old saying getting your tit in the wringer lol my mom told me about a neighbor when she young that was very large and that really happened to her ! Luck she hit the safety and it reversed !
@@jhonsiders6077 .. That saying is Still used now and then metaphorically.. 😄
@@jhonsiders6077 Weren't there later models that popped open when given too large of an object, like an arm?
@@653j521 they had a wide lever across the top that when struck opened it up a bit and you could also reverse it . I have one out in the shop that was a neighbors that still used it till they passed away had fitted a electric motor on it and it still has a small kick start gas engine to run it if you did not have electricity and make 110 volts AC to power your iron .
As a child, I remember "helping" my mother run the wringer washer. There was always a bar or large button on the top of the wringer that released all the pressure. Not a problem.
The other potentially dangerous appliance was the old-style pressure cooker with the noisy pressure regulator and no safety release. A woman up our street got wicked steam burns for opening hers too quickly.
Yup, agree. A neighbor had the pressure regulator plug up and the safety pressure release also didn't blow. The lid blew off and hot food splattered all over the kitchen. Thankfully no people or pets were in the kitchen so it was only a big mess to clean up.
@@xlerb2286 After all, it was two stove-top pressure cookers that the Boston Marathon bombers used to blow up the finish line, kill three people, dismember 17 people, and injure hundreds more. The old-style pressure cookers had a safety valve made of metal and hard rubber, but the rubber part of the plug could harden with age. (It was a natural product.) The safety valve could get clogged with food, if not properly cleaned. The rubber gasket sealing the lid had to be replaced from time to time as well. A fairly fool-proof technology, if respected and properly maintained.
You bet. I have seen the aftermath of one blow. it was full of kale. It bent the fan over the stove and COVERD the kitchen in kale.
@@williamdonahue6617 yeah but they didn't pressurize theirs , they used them due to the convenience of the size of them and that they had a handle for carrying . The fact that the thick wall construction created an almost perfect shrapnel was a bonus in their twisted minds .
@@bobbrinkerhoff3592 I didn't know that. Thanks for the info.
my mom got a used ringer washer when I was a kid in the 70's. Yes, I got my fingers stuck in the rubber rollers. I learned real quick to not do that again.
I see you're one of those "i have to see for myself" type like myself
i bet you never did that again LOL can you say OUCH
My mom had one too. My younger sisters arm got stuck in the wingers. She still has the mark today
my sister lived with scars from one when she was 9 and got her arm stuck...horrible things.
My mom had one in the '50s. I remember accidently 'wringed' a time or two, it was my job to feed the clothes into it. I was around 8-9 at the time. But our washer, a Maytag I think, had a automatic latch that would pop the wringers open if you or too many clothes got into them. Saved me from serious harm, I reckon. It also had it's own agitator in the tub. There was a "gear shift" lever on the side to engage or disengage it. It was a huge help to my mom, who up till then used a glass wood-framed scrub board to wash clothes. That was work!
Refrigerators at one time had mechanical door latches that would trap and suffocate kids if they get inside and unable to open the door, the magnetic door closures now don’t allow that to happen
I remember this! Kids were warned not to play hide and seek with those
That’s where I always store my kids in the garage in the summer when it’s hot outside 🤣
My grandparents had such a fridge in their basement in DC. I remember PSA'S warning kids to not play in them outdoors, but kids being kids...😱.
Yes, that was much more scary than the refrigerent gas.
Modern refrigerators use a flammable refrigerant. Safe for the ozone layer, but flammable. We had one of the old latching fridges when I was a child.
🎉retro greetings from coastal Mississippi. My granny had a ringer washer up till mid 70's. My parents had a General Electric refrigerator bought in 1964 and it lasted 40 years 😂 Ah sweet memories of by gone days❤
Grew up in the 60's and 70's using all of these items. Even as small children we knew not to put things in the toaster or they'd catch on fire. We used the indoor incinerator (natural gas fed and properly vented to a chimney) daily and never had any issues with it. My grandfather gave us an old wringer washer like the ones in this video, and we never once caught our fingers in the rollers and suffered amputations! Besides, they were hand-cranked. If you did start to get your fingers caught in the rollers, you just stopped cranking and reversed the direction of cranking and the problem is solved.
Would you say you're one of the lucky ones or the logical ones?
There were electric 'assisted' wringers....which as you can imagine, were potentially dangerous.
How did the trash burner work? I would assume the older it is the more likely it for it to pour smoke through all the seems
@@kirdot2011 Out of all the Appliance"s i will have to say and a REALLY BAD IDEA is the TRASH BURNER can you just imagine throwing a few aerosol cans into the trash burner can you say MINI HAND GERNADE or a piece of clothing with Human POO WOW the smell will blow your mind and your neighbors would just love the SMELL LOL .. but the sad part was the Trash Burners were also used as Crematoriums no BS there
@@kirdot2011 It was just a natural gas burner at the bottom of a refractory (fire brick) lined metal case. You put the day's trash in there and set the timer and walk away. Ours was in the cellar and vented into the chimney. Worked great! Then, the city passed ordinances against burning trash and that was the end of that.
I've been around since 1952. I never heard of an indoor incinerator. We had an I-H refrigerator that was new in 1951 and used freon. I even used it in my first house - it was 40 years old when I gave it to someone else to use. It worked as good as the day it was made. It just wasn't self-defrosting and had a mechanical door latch that are now banned.
Mom's first washer was a ringer washer, not sure of the brand, but it had a timed agitation cycle and a power "safety" wringer that would pop-up and disengage if something too thick was put thru it.
The biggest thing I remember about our old toaster was that it wasn't insulated and would burn your fingers if you touched the outside of it when in use. The insulated toasters probably had way more asbestos in them than any hair dryer ever did.
We got an International Harvester fridge used in 1957. It might have been the same model. I ended up with it. It was an anti-planned obsolescence device; lasted until about 6 years ago (2017) when, through my neglect, the frame holding the compressor on finally rusted through, pinching off the refrigerant line. I loved that old I-H fridge, replaced broken door handle and all!
hi , we had an incinerator i remember it running once,, my dad had gotten his use out of it and stopped i guess.. i was very young..
My grandma had an old Matag wringer washer. She handed down to my mother who handed down to me. Things were made so much better then. Now things are built to break down in ten years.
If they last that long
Right. That's why all my appliances were made in the 1980s. And many current things might only last five years.
My toaster was made in 1932. Works like a charm.
My grandma used her 50’s fridge and freezer until the 90’s. They still worked, but the utility company was giving rebates for upgrading to energy efficient ones. There’s an 80’s hairdryer at my parent’s house that doesn’t have a GFCI 🔌 to prevent electric shock because those weren’t required until early 90’s. No one uses it anymore but won’t throw it out.
I think everyone can agree that while old appliances were hazardous, they were definitely made to last
I cut those damn GFCI ends off. They trip way too easy. And I don't get electrocuted either.
Done some research and it was Jan 1991 when UL required ALCI plugs (appliance leakage circuit interrupter, same principle as GFCI ) on the cords of hair dryers to reduce the risk of electrocution should the dryer fall into a sink or bathtub while plugged in, whether or not the bathroom has GFCI outlets or protected by a GFCI circuit breaker at the panel , GFCI protection for bathrooms has been required since the 1975, but even today you might come across older homes without GFCIs. Studies by the consumer product safety commission during the 1980s found a disproportionately high number of electrocutions from hairdryers, and finally in 1991 when manufacturers were required to have the safety plug to obtain the UL listing the number of incidents fell sharply in the coming years. As an electrician myself yes, some code changes can seem excessive and making my work more difficult and/or expensive, but they were more than likely written in blood and I'm all for making things safer and more reliable.
The funny thing is that while her new refrigerator is more efficient than one made in the late 70’s and 80’s, Her old 50s era refrigerator was probably more efficient than the one she replaced it with. Why? It’s because the frost free function uses the extra power because it has a blower motor inside and a heating element that operates periodically to automatically defrost it. Some also have a heating elements where the door gasket contacts the refrigerator. 😂
@@dmandman9 And the reason they don't last as long is all the gadgets people buy included, from ice makers to electronics. The refrigerators that last the longest have the freezer compartment on top and no gadgets.
5:00 darn it kids close the damn fridge! ;)
That home incinerator was the biggest surprise, I knew large apartment buildings in big cities often had a chute and an incinerator but never knew they had a purpose built device in the home.
At the age of 79, I survived all that. We were and still are rough and tough.
Those who didn't survive might like to reply, but there's no internet in thier graves.
Because Lawd's, as we all know, we's uneducated moaxes was way too stupid to know better, at least according to todays Hadvad and MIT college grads who know's how to cipher.
'What doesn't kill us makes us stronger!" So true. 👍
Criminy, I even rode a bike without kneepads and a helmet in 1960.@@lancerevell5979
@@lancerevell5979 No, not true. Ever been in the home of someone with ruined lungs, on oxygen?
We used wringer washers at home for years. I’d never heard of or seen one that you had to stir with a stick. Ours had agitators much like today’s washers. You did have to make sure everything was clear when you unhooked it to release the water into the floor drain. The worst part of the wringers was they had a bad tendency to mangle zippers.
@jamesmelch. You're right. My wringers would break the tang off the zipper on a perfectly good pair of jeans. I use cheap used automatics since 35 years ago. I have three hooked up. If one quits I still have two good ones. People trade in perfectly good used ones so I get them for 40-50 dollars and get 5-24 years of use.
Ours had an agitator but I remember my mother using a stick to move the clothes around a bit. Those machines cleaned well but took a lot of our time to do all of the rinsing, etc. I did enjoy running the clothes through the wringer, always remembering to fold the clothes so the buttons were well inside so as not to break. Later when I moved in with roommates they had to show me how to use the automatic washer and dryer.
My parents’ still have a washing machine in their cellar like the ones in this video. It’s never been able to be removed because of its weight and size. And wouldn’t fit through the stairway and door. It was placed there while the house was being built. So there it rots. Cool piece of history. (I’ve never seen it ever to be used)
I was born in the 1950's and we had a gas stove that at times could be dangerous as you had
to light the oven with a kitchen match . The bottom part of the stove was the broiler and it was
easier to light the oven by opening the broiler door and lighting the burner above . The top
burners had a constant burning pilot light .My parents taught me how to be safe around
natural gas .
we had a wringer washer when I was a kid but the wringer part was able to be turned on and not cranked by hand. My hair got caught in the wringer and unfortunately my dad had to cut it to get me unstuck. I went from having waist length hair to having hair somewhere in the middle of my back
My grandmothers had wringer washers as late as the early 70s. I was surprised about asbestos in hair blowers. It was fun to see Farrah Fawcett and Anglea Cartright (Penny) in a commercial together. The indoor incinerator was a big surprise too. I forgot about the gasses used back in the days of early refrigeration. The freons used today have so little cooling power they have to make them run longer and insulate more making them big on the outside and smaller on the inside.
I use the Sunbeam toaster (shown in several of those ads) every day. It's awesome! 🙂
I used one for years. Wishing I had kept it.
Cool ! Same here.
When I lived in San Francisco, I found a wringer-washer in near mint condition on the street awaiting garbage pickup. I must have looked like a total nut wheeling that thing up and over the city hills at midnight, but it was worth it. Being able to do laundry in your own apartment is a rare blessing in that city.
We grew up using wringer washers in the 60s and we never ever even us kids got our hands caught in the wringer.
My mom had a Maytag wringer washer and I remember getting my hands caught in the wringer when I tried to “help “ wash the clothes. 😮😢😱
The wringer was electric and so was the agitator.
Was the cooling system on old refrigerators similar to the air conditioning in old cars?
The old hair dryer does “asbestos “ it can, 😊
My mom used a wringer washer for years. It got our clothes cleaner than using a more modern one. In fact my dad went to an auction and bought another one when the first one quit. Our automatic washer was barely used.
1:48 My family had a Wringer Washer back in the late 60's, early 70's. When my little brother was around 6 or so, he decided he was going to "Help" my mother do the laundry. He wound up getting his arm caught in the wringer and it pulled him in all the way to his armpit. He had broke every single bone from his fingertips up to his armpit. He was casted for almost 4 months. Fortunately, there was no permanent damage and after the cast came off plus a little recuperation time, you couldn't tell anything ever happened.
Growing up in the “sticks” my family had a trash burner - a 55 gallon steel drum in the back yard. Finally the area suburbanized enough to get street addresses (replaced “Rural Delivery”) for mail and garbage pickup.
....and you didn't need a shredder to protect your identity. All mail went up in smoke in the back yard.
When I was a young kid, my family had a very old electric toaster. It wasn't a pop-up toaster. Instead, there was a hinged door on the side. You put the toast in and physically took it out when it was done. The problem was that the heated wires that did the toasting were completely exposed once the hinged door was opened. If you accidentally touched one of the wires with your fingers, you could get burned or electrocuted.
I've seen little tongs made of carved wood you could use to remove the toast. Wood doesn't conduct electricity and they kept your hands away from the coils.
My family's first toaster oven was like that. Easily accessible heating elements that glowed red when hot. Even as kids, we knew to NOT touch them!
So many of these devices are perfectly safe if we exercise our common sense. Stupidity could be painful, as it should be.
@@lancerevell5979 Should be--rushing your most stupid child to emergency is as it should be? That kid was hopeless anyway?
We used to have a trash burner - it was awesome! Ours was not gas - you lit it with a match, it was in the basement and was vented to the outside. They were outlawed in the 70s sometime.
Those fridges lasted forever - 30-40 years. Today you are lucky to go more than 5 years without having to replace one.
My mom had that exact portable hairdryer!!! Used it for decades with zero negative effects.
Everybody living on the outskirts of Los Angeles had an incinerator in the back yard. Ours was concrete. Sone things my dad burned put out thick black smoke. As a kid, I remember him saying ''Don't breathe that. Its no good for you.'' Every lumberyard had a big steel cone shaped burner with a curved mesh spark screen on top. The one near us was about 15 feet wide and maybe 20 feet tall.
I remember on the news that some guy had been developing film in an older building. And he noticed tiny specks on his photos. Turned out it was asbestos. Then they started to find out that that was in so many old school ceilings and was dangerous.I remember this from the late 70s, or early 80s.
asbestos was really a silent health hazard back in the day
@@MemoryManor Went to an old elementary school with it in the 60s . I'm still around so far.
Right? how the hell are we still alive?
Too much exaggerated hype on abestos dangers. I don't know ANY mechanics that had lung problems because they installed brake shoes that had asbestos in them. This is in 53 years of my having been in the car repair business.
That is why so many older school buildings sit empty and cannot be converted to low cost housing. That and lead paint.
I remember as a little kid, I'm going back to when I was 4 or 5, my mom had an "old fashioned" ringer washer in the "out-kitchen" which is what mud rooms were called back in the stone age...
I never saw one of the gas-fired indoor trash burners, but I do remember having an "incinerator" in the back yard. This was basically a concrete box with a hinged metal lid and some vents in the bottom that was used for burning paper trash. You'd just dump the trash in it, toss in a match, and let it burn the paper to ash. Eventually the city banned trash burning to reduce air pollution.
My home property still has the "burn pit" my late Dad built back in the early 1970s, similar concrete box with fence wire over the top to catch larger embers, and a sliding door on one side to rake out ashes. I no longer have a water hose and faucet out there to use in case an ember gets loose and starts a yard fire, so I don't use it.
Thank you for sharing these memories; and you have an effective voice that provides the viewers with delightful perspectives within your narrative. One thing I do want to point out is, wringer washers weren't a mainstay of the 1950s and 1960s--from my experience of growing up during that time (born in 1948) That style of washer was popular prior to, at least, the mid-1950s, but it was certainly popular and in widespread use during the 1930s and '40s. In our home, in the 1950s and '60s, we had washers and dryers that look pretty much like what today offers consumers on the showroom floor.
I'm 71. Our family had several wringer washing machines and I LOVED using them! Squeezing wet clothes through the wringer made a mess, which is fun for a boy. BTW, they weren't as dangerous as this video says - When the wringer jammed, it would pop open.
Back in the 50's we had ringer washerbone day my younger sister poked a stick horse int the rollers. It went in until the ringers popped open. No one was hurt but the horse had funny spiral marks on it. My sister got into so much trouble.😊
You left out the fridge that used ammonia gas for a refrigerant. We had a ringer washer in our old house in the 50s we used to play with it, we never got more than a pinch because you were the one turning the crank. When I was little my mother said what all parents should have said, unplug it before sticking anything thing in the toaster other than bread.
Oh wow i can't believe i left that out!
We had wooden tongs designed to remove the toast.
Personally, I have never understood what the problem is with ammonia as a refrigerant. It even releases a very distinct odor from the tiniest of leaks, alerting the user service is needed.
@@ernestsmith3581 Ammonia is still used in lots of commercial systems. Ice rinks use ammonia as the coolant, for example.
Oh lovely...my mom got me and my 3 sisters a hair dryer in the 70's with green stamps
that was identical to one of the hair dryers!!!
Incredible!!! :)
I don't know what you consider to be modern as far as toasters are concerned, but I have a 1925 Toastmaster single slice toaster that I think is perfectly safe...except for the cloth covered power cord. And it toasts reasonably well.
That cloth might be asbestos.
I have one from the '50s that I use all the time. I removed the old cloth covered power cord as it was frayed and replaced it with a new one.
We had one of those washers when I was a child. My mother kept it until around 1990 when she moved into a smaller single level house. No one would move it for her. We also had a weird toaster. The sides of the toaster flipped down. I think it was called a drop side electric toaster. It is the only one that I have ever seen.
Ammonia is still used in commercial and industrial refrigeration, which can be smelled before it reaches hazardous concentrations. The most shocking one to me was the indoor garbage burner. Speed Queen was another brand of wringer washer. My mother used one for years.
Got news - Those radiant control Sunbeam toasters are great - I have one sitting on my kitchen counter right now. Just drop in the bread and it lowers itself into the toaster; when it's done, it silently comes back up fully toasted. We tried a new toaster a few years ago, and it was so slow, we went right back to the sunbeam. Mine is probably 60 years old and works just fine...
You forgot about another refrigerant used. Ammonia, the neighbors freezer leaked and we had to leave until the vapor was gone.
How could i make such a mistake!
Refrigerators now run propane as the refrigerant. They have been known to explode and wipe out an entire kitchen.
wow
Ammonia is still used today in RV refrigerators, my parents have one that came with their camper (camper is not even a whole year old, so not antique) and it even has the latching doors (needed so they stay close during transport of the camper). There’s actually a reason for this…adaptability…
See, refrigerators that utilize ammonia do so by boiling water which releases the gas which then flows through the system on its own to then mix back into the water at the end…then rinse and repeat. That means no need for a compressor which also means no need for electric. These refrigerators can run on propane gas just as easily as their default electric heating element. Yes…they use HEAT to produce COLD, imagine that conundrum. Someone really should make a video about these (looking at you Technology Connections 😅).
But I digress. All of this oddly backwards sounding yet effective heated cold…hot-for-cold…chilled heat(?)…anyway, what all of this weird nonsense that oddly makes sense does is make it so you can be camping on the middle of the deepest woods, with no electric connection for miles, no charge on battery with it being midnight with a new moon and so long as you have propane, your refrigerator will still keeping your cold food items chilling like a villain who’s just found himself stranded at the South Pole with zero issues.
Quite interesting to see what outdated tech one can find in a modern RV…😅
I had never heard of those garbage burners before. When the model first dropped the bag in, I thought, Trash Compactor. It's too bad that asbestos is damaging to living things, it really is amazingly fire proof. People forget, that it really did what they claimed.
My mother had a wringer washing machine. It had a safety release button you could press to release the rollers. The problem was that this button was on the wrong side. Mum would only wash when we were home. If we heard a yell we'd go and press the release button. Those machines were lethal.
The “indoor garbage burner,” aka incinerator. My grandparents built their home in ‘53 and had one in the basement. It’s still there, to this day. I had fun throwing old paper in it to burn as a kid
As a kid I in 60s, I recall how appliances suddenly belching a shower of sparks was commonplace.
Which appliances?
I got my arm caught in the washer ringer when I was about five. Mom started to try and reverse the rollers, but couldn't make it work. My dad walked over and simply unlatched the rollers setting me free. I don't know how common this style was, but I liked it. 😁
An old phrase, "you look like you've been through the wringer!", comes to mind.
My parents and relatives were still using ringer washers well into the late 70's!
I can remember that our family had natural gas refrigerators. Those used ammonia as the refrigerant.
My great grandmother had a gas refrigerator and when I was 12 we moved from a large city to the country and the people we bought our house from had a refrigerator that ran on propane. We used it until our electric refrigerator was moved. Because they weren’t electric there was no light in the refrigerator.
Mother had a wringer washer until 1970, when Dad got her an automatic. For the longest time, she hated the automatic because it didn't get the clothes as clean. (Science has proven her right. Automatic machines used 9 Flux of water, while the wringers used 23 fluxes.)
She never got her fingers caught in the wringer, but Granny did once.
With regard to refrigerants before sulfur dioxide pure amonia was used, also the "safer" refrigerant was freon which was safer for handling but nearly destroyed the ozone layer.
The wedding gift my mon & dad gave my uncle & bride when they were married in 1973 was a toaster. The toaster had a slide vs a dial to regulate time. But what made this toaster so great is that it not not still sits on their kitchen counter, but that it still works great & looks brand new.
I never knew about the in home burners. We had a second hand wringer washer, never got my fingers caught in between the rollers as mom never let us close as she was washing the ❤clothes.
Grew up with the ringer washer. My friends parents had theirs well into the 80s. I was taught to stay back as a child.
Is this why people say they get "put through the ringer" ?
Also I just got rid of my Mom’s old HotPoint refrigerator, circa 1951. Only got rid of it because my husband and I moved from a house to a condo.
That's where the danger LAY. You're welcome. There was considerably less danger with the hand operated wringer than with the more "modern" electric powered wringer. Even then, they eventually made them with a safety device that would stop the motor somehow if your hand got caught in it.
I remember the ringer washers, we had one until the early 70s, never had a problem. I still have a 70s hair dryer and we had a late 50s refrigerator that we put in our basement and continued to use after we got a new one in the late 60s. It lasted into the early 2000s.
In the greater Los Angeles area during the 1950s we had back yard incinerators, never in the house. They were banned October 1957 because of their contribution to air pollution
And now we're back to letting the garbage company take care of our wastes
In my small town in Ohio during the early '60s, they still permitted burning piles of leaves in the fall. Today, we compost.
I remember a Great Aunt who lived in a apartment building in Los Angeles. We visited when I was a little girl in the mid-“60’s and I was fascinated by the shoot where you’d drop the garbage to be burned. Apparently not all incinerators had been banned.
In Missouri was able to burn trash in a barrow up until the 1980s
Using the incinerator was one of my daily chores in LA.
My parents had pretty much all of those items. several of them being the exact items shown in the video. Even the garbage burner, though I never saw them use it. Many of the wringer washers had a release lever on top that would take the pressure off the rollers but in a panic you could do some damage before managing to use the release lever.
I've never used or been around a wringer washer, but they sound so much more reliable than an automatic machine. If I could find one with a manually operated wringer, I would seriously consider getting it as a backup to my current machine.
Loved the take out try of veggies !!!!❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
I was shocked to hear of the indoor incenerators, wow! (I'm pretty sure I mis-spelled that word for trash burner )
BTW no you did not say its wrong or mis-spelled 100% correct
Wow!! I have used all that stuff growing up except the trash burner!! Never heard of that before! Oh, my! 😱💀
@@karinwolf3645 A friend of mine's family during the '70s had a trash compactor (not burner) in their kitchen. I never knew about trash burners though, until I saw this video.
Wringer washers were invented in the 1880s, not the 1950s. That said, my grandmother got her boobs caught in the wringer. My mother got her hands caught TWICE. I was taught how to use the wringer washer at about age 10. I used a broom handle to stuff the wringer.
The MANUAL Ringer washers where OK. That is, those where the rollers where hand crank activated. The problem really started when the motorized ones where introduced... A LOT of peoples lost a arm to those.
Sulphur dioxide turns into sulphuric acid when exposed to water. Inhaling it mean that sulphuric acid is made from your nose and all the way to inside the lungs.
We had a Maytag wringer washer in our kitchen when I was young. I helped with the laundry and knew enough to keep my fingers away from the wringers. Our dryer was the clotheslines outside!
I’ve used plenty of blow dryers, and am now 73, no asbestosis. I don’t remember the home incinerator or the toaster!
HEY HEY …I USED THAT UP TO 1964 ..IT WORKED GREAT !!!!!!!
The alliance vented as a fireplace did.. and we had two great fireplaces in our home …
RINGER WASHERS WETE GREAT TO .. I used them at 10yrs old .. 70 years ago !!!!
Something gladfully gone are refridgerators with heavy door latches that closed with a ker-CHUNK. They could not be opened from the inside and trapped many a young child playing "fort" with a junked one outside.
definitely took out the fun for kids!
An elderly couple had a junk 1950s era fridge that sat outside their house for many years. The lady in her 90s told me the city required that the door be removed to prevent kids getting trapped inside. In 2013, after she went into assisted living, I hauled the fridge to our local Goodwill, which at the time accepted scrap major appliances.
Regarding the need for an indoor incinerator, it might be needed because they don't pick up burnable trash. I'm 72 and in L.A. they didn't pick burnable trash. So, every home and apt building had an outdoor incinerator until aground 1960/61 when all trash was picked up. Now imagine a city as big as L.A. burning trash. It was a horrible choking eye burning smog. Sometimes we weren't allowed outside for recess.
That Maytag was a Saturday morning chore at my grandmother's house and I helped her from the time I was little. I knew better than to get anywhere near those rollers. But one time I put a small boat in the agitating water to see if it would float. It didn't. We later found it in my grandfathers's long johns,, Unfortunately it was AFTER the long johns went through the wringer and we heard the crunch of plastic. Gramps was pickng pieces of plastic out of his keester for the whole of the next week. My cousin Marion did get herr hands caught in the rollers right up to her elbows. There was a latch at the top of the ringer that would separate the rollers if that happened. But she ad BOTH arms caught. Luckily my grandmother caught it and she was not badly hurt, just scared.
As to the washer you had to add HOT water to the machine because the machine had no way to heat it.. Grandmother heated two buckets of water on the stove and used two more to rinse the clothes. Also there was no stick used in the electric washers as they had an agitator that was powered.It would swish back and forth to agitate the clothes and would give your hand a good smack when you reached to put clothes in the ringer or went to untangle them.
Got my fingers and arm in the ringer once. Learned my lesson.
None of this was surprising to me. Actually, those wringer washers had vertical agitators. My grandmother had one in her basement.
Toasters had been invented around the turn of the 20th century, but became popular in the 1920s, according to two sources.
Wow! My mom had wringer luckily , never got caught in one. I still have a hair dryer with asbestos in it. I quit using it when the warning came out (1978?). It's a Sears. We also had a Sunbeam automatic toaster from 1953 that lowered and raised the bread slowly.
Don't forget how refrigerators before 1958 could cause one to get trapped inside and suffocate to death. And going really far back were those x-ray shoe sizers where you put your foot inside and with the x-ray it was supposed to give a more precise fit. But in the early days of x-ray usage it wasn't fully realized just how dangerous they can be if they are misused.
I never heard of the Garbage burner and I am 72. I lived through that era. I did wash in a wringer washer for the family starting around age 10 until we got an automatic washer just after my mom and dad split up in the early 70s.
When I was a child, I was "helping " my grandmother do the laundry. She had an electric ringer washer. I was feeding the laundry into the ringer when my whole arm was pulled in along with the laundry. Two things saved me from harm: one, my grandmother quickly unplugged the washer to stop the pulling, and two, the rollers were spring-loaded, so the pressure on my arm was not extreme. It was more frightening than hurting. My other grandmother lived on a farm with no electricity, so she had a hand cranked ringer washer. On the porch to let the water empty into the yard (no indoor plumbing)
My mom had a mangle. You never hear about them. You sat in front of it and it had an electrically heated cloth covered roller that was about 8 inches in diameter and maybe 32 inches wide. There was a curved steel spring loaded follower plate that covered part of the roller. It took the place of an ironing board. There was a 3 inch diameter rubber knob that you banged with your knee to reverse the roller direction to make multiple passes. I can still hear its sounds when my mom operated it. That was in the early 1960's. It was old when my dad brought it home. It didn't work as the cloth braided electrical cord was shorted out so Pop installed a new cord for her.
Holy smokes! I found a video of a mangle, the same brand that my mom used.
ua-cam.com/video/H4iftGu2j_I/v-deo.html
"Convenience was highly valued in those times"!?!?! Heck today the act of opening a box of cereal, pouring in milk and the putting the milk back in the fridge and the cereal away is about 4 more steps than Gen X is capable of doing. Forget about making coffee!
My biggest understatement won't you say?
I actually meant Gen Z. Pretty much Millenials too.
I thought you sounded confused 😂😂😂
Thank you for the clarification, I come from the common sense needed generation.@@davesnothereman7250
That’s why there’s a coffee shop on every corner
We had a mangle. It was sort of a large automated iron. You had to feed stuff into the right position. It was easy to get a bad burn. I also ran my hand through a wringer .
No major damage.
My mom had a cottage industry with hers
Not an appliance but those old Lane cedar chests and other brands were impossible to get out once the lid closed. It’s advisable if you have one to remove the mechanism. Too many children have suffocated while playing hide and seek.
Kids were getting hit by a closing lid and trapped at the neck.
When I was in the fourth grade, I was at my aunts house. She owned a laundromat and had several wringer machines. my cousin and I were doing some laundry for her. My fingers got stuck between the wringers, and it took my arm clear up to my elbow. I had to have two surgeries on my arm to remove the burnt tissue and replace that with a skin graph taken from my abdomen. A very scary time for young eight year old. I’m now 71 and I still have the scar to prove it.
I remember powered "rinner washers " with small gasoline engine powering the rollers .
Sulpher dioxide can be very toxic
Wringer washers are still available. They never went out of production. My grandmother always used one.
The incinerators were vented into the chimney can’t see how the fumes got into the house .I still have a old wringer washer they have a safety release on them to stop and reverse the rollers . toasters are still built the same way only the outer case does not get as hot as the old ones common sense is what people had back then it’s a rare thing now days. Even the refrigerant in my new refrigerator is a new type that is flammable ! The old R 22 was not !
you say all that stuff was so bad but we are still here and the old stuff still works to. new stuff doesn't work as well or even last till warranty.
Stop buying all the bells and whistles and you'll find they last just fine.
We had a wringer washer when I was a kid. We inherited it from my paternal grandma.
I'm sure someone else has said it, I hope, but ringer washers were not manual in terms of cranking the rollers and that's what made them dangerous. The rollers were motorized. You had to squeeze the clothes down to feed a tongue of clothes into them and then guide as they dragged the clothing and sometimes your hands. The ones I remember from my youth had an emergency released that you could hammer on that released one end of the rollers.
Earlier versions were hand-cranked. My Mom had one in England in the early 1960's
Umm, newer fridges aren't necessarily safer. As the various Freon formulas are being forcibly phased out, manufacturers have now turned to "R290" which is non-odorized PROPANE! Which is extremely flammable. Some progress, eh?
There is only a few ounces of refrigerant in refrigerators and almost always leaks out at a very slow rate. One freezer I charged in 1977 only required 3 1/2 ounces of R22. I quickly went back to vehicle A.C. repair as the volume of refrigerant was 8 to 10 times as much and leaks could be found easier and they had a larger reserve amount of freon to keep working with.
My building has a old incinerator in the laundry but the door is welded shut !
My mom was using her wringer when my then-toddler brother stuck his arm in. She watched in horror as his little hand came out the other side. She laughed at her own reaction, which was to totally forget the thing had an emergency release. She just reverse cranked his arm back out. Thankfully, she had been wringing thick bath towels, so no harm done.
I grew up in the 50s and never even heard of these garbage burners so how popular could they have been ?
Not very. Neither were trash compactors, another ecological nightmare.
I remember telling about getting her ta ta stuck in the rollers of the wringer washer. Pretty funny
Another thing about old toasters, is the outer shell got too hot to touch when in use, and for minutes afterwards. Modern toasters have an extra insulating layer, so the shell won't burn you.
As for the burner, in the 1960s, in the Los Angeles area, we had incinerators in the back yard, for burning garbage. Their use had been outlawed by the late 1950s, but many still remained, and only were removed at a slow rate.
Wringer washing machines were abundant when I was a child. I don't recall ever seeing one where you would have to agitate the clothes with a length of timber. They all had agitators built in.
How many people got shocked because they were foolish enough to remove a slice of bread from a toaster with a metal fork? No warning labels on them I bet.
different way to jumpstart your mornings am i right?
@@MemoryManor Good one .
I knew better than to do that! And I’m a boomer!
Guess we just had common sense back then and didn’t need warning labels on everything…..
We had wooden tongs designed for the job.
I had an old do it yourself kidney transplant machine years ago. It worked fine but getting replacement fuses and blades for it was hard.
My mother had a washer like that and never had any trouble. Never heard of anybody dying from SO2 in a fridge, from asbestos in a hair dryer, or bread in a toaster. The words Nanny State ring a bell here?
They only bitch about the nanny state on the Rhetty channel. Please go back there and stay, and let us enjoy ourselves here.
Mom had wringer washers for quite a while. When she got her first automatic, she very disappointed with how the clothes were never as clean. Don't know why you had to stir the clothes with a stick? We must have been "uppity" because mom had agitator. My brother move in down the street and had a wringer washer. Mom said she was always embarrassed because my brothers laundry was always cleaner than hers! The clothes line tells all!
@markreets. The stick was for pushing clothing into the water quicker and for getting clothing, socks, etc. out of the water without sticking an arm into sometimes overly warm water.
When commenting on the old toasters, you should have shown the models that were unsafe, not the ones that you did - those were the modern ones. I remember the old ones and actually got burnt on them once. They were actually as you said - the heating elements fully exposed to the touch. They were unbelievably dangerous.
Wow these are all the things that were really useful