buelligan
One of the Regulars
- Messages
- 109
- Location
- London, OH
That's an early home dishwasher -- my best friend's house, built in 1950, has one very much like that built into the sink. Under the lid you'd find a circular wire rack for dishes, arranged in tiers. Such units were available -- if you could afford them -- as far back as the twenties, but very few people could afford them until after the war.
In the "Lustron" homes of the 50's (Pre-fab all metal homes made with porcelain enameled steel) they had an interesting gizmo made by Thor that was both a dishwasher and a clothes washer. All you had to do is add or remove a rack designed to hold your dishes. I've heard it didn't work very well. Here's an excerpt from a Wikipedia link:
Automagic washer/dishwasher[edit]
In the 1940s, Thor introduced the Automagic hybrid washer/dishwasher. The top-loading machine included both a removable clothes washing drum and a dish-washing drum. The Automagic was widely marketed but disappeared from the marketplace soon after its introduction, as many consumers soured to the idea of washing dirty clothing and dishes in the same machine.[5]