Developed by the Voss Brothers Manufacturing Company of Davenport, Iowa, this platform washing machine became a very popular machine by the 1910s, even being sold overseas. Early Voss Brothers models were powered by hand or by a belt attached to an animal treadmill; however, by 1905, the company had attached a small motor to many of its washers. Just as with many machines during the period from 1900 to 1930, the washing machine was adapted to changes in mechanization and power supply. Over his lifetime, William H. Voss, the company’s founder, acquired several dozen patents for his designs which reveal his constant rethinking of the washing machine and how it would work. Stuhr’s Voss washing machine is not connected to an electric motor but is connected by belt to a First Prize Dog Power Treadmill which, with the aide of an energetic dog, could be used to power it.
When this washer was made near the beginning of the twentieth century, there were a wide variety of ways to wash clothes. Throughout the preceding century, many women and men on the North American prairie used a washboard or a simple wooden tub with a wood stirrer to do the clothes washing. Although the first mechanized washing machines date back to the late eighteenth century, the earliest models were sold primarily to public institutions and wealthy households. As mechanized washing machines became more widely available at a lower cost during the last few decades of the nineteenth century, more women and men began using them on prairie farms. By the time Voss Brothers Manufacturing Company made this platform washer, they had already sold several hundred thousand washers all over the United States.
Although there were a variety of options for using the platform washer, the person doing the washing could have followed a very simple process. If, for example, a lady of the house kept to one of the most common processes, she had two additional, plain tubs set on the platform as well as access to water and heat. She placed the clothes to be washed inside the tub you see on the platform. She then added boiling water and some form of washing soap (sometimes mixed with paraffin wax) to the tub. In order to power the machine, she had a dog or sheep on a power treadmill, or an electric motor which turned the belt wheel and spun a mechanical stirrer inside the tub, moving the clothes around.
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| From Electrical Record, vol. XVI, no. 6 (Dec., 1914), p. 42. |
Once the washing machine was finished, the woman of the house wrung the clothes out in the wringer set up next to the washing machine tub. In order to do it properly, she folded the clothes so that any buttons were turned inside and so the piece of clothing was an even thickness as it moved through the wringer. After removing as much soapy water as possible with the wringer, she then placed the clothes into the first tub for rinsing, trying to remove as much of the soapy residue as possible. After rinsing, she might wring the clothes out a second time before hanging them up to dry. For whites, she used the second tub for bluing. The term bluing refers to the indigo, Prussian blue, ultramarine, or aniline blue solution diluted in water and used to remove the yellowing caused by the washing soaps.1 After bluing the clothes, she again might rinse and wring them before hanging them up to dry. Before the development of a washing process like this, a person took the better part of a day to do the washing. Using this process, she or he could finish by midmorning.
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| An image of the Voss Brothers factory, found in Farm Implement News, vol. XXXV, no. 48 (Nov. 26, 1914). |
Established in 1877 and incorporated in 1901, the Voss Brothers Manufacturing Company helped make Davenport, Iowa, into an important center for the washing machine industry. The Voss brothers, William H., Fred P., and John A., came to Davenport from Mecklenburg, Germany, with their parents in the early 1870s.2 William followed his father in the woodworking trade and, after his father’s death in 1876, became the primary breadwinner for the family. Later that year, William began experimenting with his first washer in order to help his mom save time washing the family’s clothes. He sold his first washer for ten dollars soon after; however, when he started a shop in 1877, he focused on wood working of all kinds and not just on washing machines. In 1882, his younger brothers joined him in his venture and they built a larger factory in anticipation of their growth. By 1901, the company had become very successful focusing on washing machines, mass producing their Ocean Wave washer which they would eventually sell worldwide.
By 1910, the brothers had developed several washing machines, as well as the Little Giant Corn Cutter, ironing boards, and clothes driers. The 1909 edition of Millard’s Implement Directory of Illinois and Iowa listed the Automatic, Eagle, Eclipse, High-Speed Rotary, and Ocean Wave as the company’s washing machine models.3 In 1909, according to historian Edgar Rubey Harlan, the company also “perfected the platform washer,” an example of which is the washer displayed at Stuhr (although lacking the additional tubs for rinsing and bluing).4 To the 1909 Millard’s list, the 1912 Implement Blue Book added the Duplex, Mermaid, Pendulum, Sunshine, Universal, and Voss models.5 By 1914, the company’s factory in Davenport had 75,000 square feet of floor space and employed about one hundred workers.6 It was possibly around this time that the factory produced Stuhr Museum’s platform washer, a washer which looks much like the one advertised on the pages of several editions of Farm Implement News in 1914.
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An advertisement from Farm Implement News,
vol. XXXV, no. 40 (Oct. 1, 1914), p. 31.
Note the electric motor connected by belt
to the wheel on the side of the washer.
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Notes
1 The process for bluing was described in The Cornell Reading-Courses Lesson for the Farm Home, vol. 1, No. 11 (March 1, 1912), printed in the Twenty-Fifth Annual Report of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University and the Agricultural Experiment Station Established Under the Direction of Cornell University, Part II, pp. 1123-1124, published in Ithaca by Cornell University and printed in Albany by J. B. Lyon Company in 1913. You can find a variety of detailed contemporary descriptions of clothes washing processes in this volume. If you would like to see a wonderful video showing several different types of clothes washers from the late 1800s and early 1900s, click or touch here. This video is about 7 minutes and 30 seconds long, and its host shows you several different mechanisms which inventors devised to tumble, stir, or agitate clothes in a tub. The video is provided by the Washing Machine Museum in Eaton, Colorado.
2 Edgar Rubey Harlan, “William H. Voss,” from A Narrative History of the People of Iowa with Special Treatment of Their Chief Enterprises in Education, Religion, Valor, Industry, Business, Etc., vol. IV (Chicago and New York: The American Historical Society, Inc., 1931), says the Voss family settled in Scott County, Iowa fourteen years after William’s birth on August 21, 1856; John Willard, “Changing the World of Washing,” The Quad-City Times, June 14, 2005, says the family arrived in Davenport in 1873. Harlan’s article can be found here. Willard’s article can be found here. The Quad-City Times has at least two other articles on their website which give a little more information on Voss Brothers.
3 F. A. Millard, Millard’s Implement Directory of Illinois and Iowa, vol. XIII (1909).
4 Edgar Rubey Harlan, “William H. Voss.”
5 1912 Implement Blue Book: The Standard Implement and Vehicle Directory of the United States (St. Louis: Midland Publishing Co., 1912). By 1916, the list of Voss Bros. Co. products included the E1, E2, and Voss Electric Washing Machines; the Automatic, Duplex, Eagle, Eclipse, High Speed, Ocean Wave, Pendulum, Sunshine, Universal, Vacuum, and Voss Hand Washing Machines; the G1, G2, Ocean Wave, Sunshine, and Universal Power Washing Machines; and the Mermaid, and Voss Water Motor Washing Machines. Millard’s Implement Directory for Eastern Iowa and Northern Illinois, vol. XX (1916), pp. 838-844, published by Implement Trade Journal Co. in Kansas City, MO.
6 Farm Implement News, vol. xxxv, no. 48 November 26, 1914. p. 69.
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