June Meyer, age 11, of Dayton, Ohio, for her question:
WHEN DID WE START HAVING LAUNDRIES?
Laundries as we know them today actually owe their start to the California gold rush of 1849. A miner named Davis failed to find gold, so he started a laundry near Oakland, Calif. At first he washed clothes in a barrel but then a man named Charles Mattee designed a crude wooden wash wheel for him, and other improvements followed.
Actually, no one knows when commercial laundries first started. The Romans sent clothes to commercial laundries as long as 2,000 years ago. During the Middle Ages, the woolen clothing that everyone wore usually was never washed, and laundries all but disappeared.
Today there are more than 11,000 commercial power laundries in Canada and the United States. This does not include the thousands of launderettes.
The large commercial laundries employ almost 500,000 persons and they do a business of almost $2 billion. Also, there are about 7,000 hand laundries today in America.
After a person sends a bundle of clothes to a laundry today, several steps take place in different departments. After the laundry has been marked for identification, workers sort the clothes according to the kind of material and the color.
Next clothes go to washing machines. Commercial washers hold from 25 to 1,200 pounds of laundry. Rotating cylinders in the washing machines swish the clothes about in detergent or soap and water until they are clean. Detergent is a synthetic cleaning agent.
The detergent or soap and water in the machine may be changed five or six times to get the clothes completely clean. At least four hot water rinses follow to make sure that all dirt and soap are removed.
Then the clothes go to a spinner which whirls the clothes around to remove much of the water. The clothes are dried and ironed, if ironing is needed. The clothes are then folded and packaged for return to the customer.
Hundreds of years ago most people washed their clothes in rivers or small streams. The women soaked the clothes and then beat them with sticks or scrubbed them on rocks to remove the dirt. More recently, the clothes were scrubbed on washboards.
In many parts of the world, these old fashioned ways are still used. But most people in industrialized countries today can turn on automatic electric washing machines that remove the dirt from the clothes easily and quickly. They may also have automatic clothes driers.
Commrcial laundries today provide special services if they are needed. For example, restaurants and other establishments may easily arrange for washing and ironing of all tablecloths and napkins. Also, diaper laundry services are available.
Many institutions such as hospitals have their own laundries. This also goes for hotels and motor inns.
There are currently over 25,000 coin operated Laundromats in the United States.