Original subtitles

[Narrator] They are in every home in America.

A combined 27 million are sold each year,

creating an annual $40 billion industry.

Over 100 years ago, the washing machine, dishwasher,

and refrigerator transformed our lives.

Pretty darn clean.

I don't think there's a full appreciation

for what homemakers went through

before all of these home technologies

made our lives so much easier.

[Narrator] These miracles of home technology

are brought to life by visionaries

like Frederick Lewis Maytag.

The Gyrafoam.

We'll say it's a tempest in a tub.

[Narrator] General Motors' William Durant.

Why would a man who makes automobiles

want to make refrigerators?

The car is a box with a motor.

This is just a different kind of box.

[Narrator] And a pioneering inventor

who broke boundaries and changed the world.

Where are the scrubbers?

No scrubbers.

Water pressure.

[Narrator] But the drive to innovate comes at a cost.

I am beyond exhausted.

We've got five banks breathing down our necks.

I need a home loan.

With innovators, there is a razor thin line

between overwhelming success and stunning failure.

[Narrator] It's a fight to be first in a new frontier.

This is the key.

Boat motor.

Can't believe I didn't see this before.

[Narrator] This is home tech revolution.

(engine roaring) (tense music)

It's 1883, the height of the Industrial Revolution.

Mechanization has led to massive advancements

in transportation, communication, and agriculture.

There's just a lot of movement.

There's a lot of growth.

There's a lot of size and productivity.

Suddenly you can build products

on a massive scale never before imagined.

[Narrator] But as new technologies reshape

how Americans live and work, there's one area

that is still stuck in the past.

People have no idea how much hard work

there was involved in just daily life.

Just keeping your household to a basic level

of cleanliness and making food

took people at least 40 hours a week.

(tense music)

[Narrator] In Illinois, one woman knows

the drudgery of household labor,

even if she doesn't have to do it herself.

Josephine Cochrane comes from a comfortable background,

is someone who never has to worry about

having to go to work for a living.

She became a socialite and a political wife

and began entertaining.

[Narrator] One of her prized possessions

is heirloom China from the 1600s.

What?

This is impossible,

[Narrator] But the household staff has repeatedly

chipped her beloved plates while washing them.

And after her next dinner party, she cleans them herself.

(tense music)

Oh my.

There's another one.

How is this happening?

[Narrator] She discovers it's harder than it looks.

She decided the time had come to make a change.

(birds chirping)

I wonder why no one invented a machine to wash dishes.

(tense music)

I doubt anyone thinks that's very important.

And why in the world would anyone need

a machine to wash dishes?

At the time, many middleclass women had a maid,

had a cook, had someone who was in the home

doing the physical human labor.

The dishwasher doesn't seem as much of a necessity.

(tense music)

[Narrator] Despite her husband's lack of enthusiasm,

in 1883, Josephine Cochrane begins work

on a mechanical handcranked dish washing machine.

(tense music)

I can maybe put the dishes in here.

Yeah, that will work.

[Narrator] Obsessed with building a better dish washer,

Josephine spends months refining her idea.

Oh my God, William, William, are you okay?

[Narrator] But then her husband William

dies suddenly from a heart attack,

leaving Josephine to confront a shocking truth.

She thought they were very well off,

but what her husband unexpectedly died,

it turned out they had a lot more debts,

and she really needed to scramble

to find a living for herself.

The dishwasher was no longer just this great idea she had,

but it became a financial necessity

for her to construct something

that would be bought by consumers.

(tense music)

[Narrator] 330 miles away, a farm equipment manufacturer

is also on the brink of financial ruin.

To boost profits during the slow fall and winter months,

he's made a series of risky investments,

and they've all gone belly up.

[Frederick] This doesn't add up.

Frederick L. Maytag has a very diverse background

in terms of various business ventures.

He was willing to strike out and get involved

if he thought it was a good opportunity

and if it appealed to him.

(tense music)

[Narrator] One day, Maytag's company

will create a product found in over 80%

of American households.

Wash 660 million loads of laundry per week,

and become an empire worth $1.7 billion.

But in 1907, Frederick Maytag is deep in debt,

doing everything he can to keep his farm equipment company

from going under.

Frederick Maytag was the perfect salesman

in that he wanted to keep up with his customers

and he wanted them to visit and to talk to him

about how to improve his sales and products.

Hello, Mrs. Classet, how are you?

Hi.

That looks painful.

Oh, I'm used to it.

[Narrator] Maytag has made a living

helping farmers mechanize their work,

but he's struck by one job that still requires

intense manual labor.

A woman's work is never done, as they say.

Monday was washing day, the worst day of the week,

every woman loathed washing clothes.

You'd start the process by chopping wood.

There were no hot water heaters.

You had to make a fire, boil the water,

you had to pump the water.

At every stage it was hard manual labor.

[Narrator] A single load of laundry

would typically use about 50 gallons of water

for washing, boiling, and rinsing,

requiring a woman to carry water

from a pump or well eight to 10 times.

In the late 1800s, over the course of a year,

the average housewife will walk 148 miles

and carry over 36 tons of water doing laundry.

Maytag believes if he can use his company's

mechanical expertise to build a better washing machine,

he could make a fortune.

But there are already several different kinds on the market.

If he created a product that was easy

for the housewife to operate, if it was easy to repair,

then that product was going to sell itself.

(tense music)

[Narrator] Maytag and his engineers

tinker with the design.

In 1909, he has a new working model called the Pastime.

It incorporated a flywheel, a power assist, if you would,

that would give your muscles more power

to agitate the laundry, and make it a far less onerous task.

(knocking on door)

Good afternoon, Mrs. Classet.

Apologies for showing up on announced.

But I wonder, do you have any washing you need done?

[Narrator] In 1909, Maytag introduces

the Pastime washing machine.

It's a new design created to make life easier

for housewives who have the backbreaking task

of washing their clothes by hand.

He has come up with a more efficient fly wheel,

which is placed underneath the tub, less effort to activate.

[Frederick] We've engineered this

to make washing a lot easier for you.

It was all about making it a much more

laborsaving device for women.

[Narrator] Maytag's Pastime sells well,

helping him slowly dig out of a financial hole.

But ultimately, the appliance has a fatal flaw.

It still has to be operated manually,

and Maytag's competitors are one step ahead,

thanks to the technological miracle of electricity.

When people came and saw the different ways

in which they could use the new power

of electricity to change their lives,

that created excitement for products.

Now suddenly you have the opportunity to do the same labor

you were doing before, but much faster.

(tense music)

(birds chirping)

[Narrator] Realizing he must adapt

or get left behind, Frederick Maytag wants electricity

to power his next generation washing machine.

[Frederick] I don't care what it costs.

I want this electric washer up and running

by the end of the month.

[Man] Yes sir, Mr. Maytag.

[Narrator] Fortunately, there's this inventor

by the name of Howard Snyder.

He's head of the experimental lab,

as it was called back then.

[Narrator] But can Snyder get the Pastime

to run on electricity?

(pensive music)

Howard Snyder would be referred to

as a value added inventor.

He could take an existing product and make it better.

And he built an electric motor

and had a different style ringer.

With this type of device, you could wash

a load of clothes at the same time

that you're ringing a load of clothes.

[Narrator] Sales of Maytag's new electric

Pastime washing machine begin to take off.

But it may not be enough.

Maytag and Snyder recognized early on

that this machine only basically serves

half of our customer base.

Housewives in town.

The problem was in the early days of the 20th century,

farms were not electrified.

They are rural locations that power

may not get to for decades to come.

How was he going to market his washing machine idea

to people without power?

[Narrator] Maytag needs something

his rural customers who don't have electricity can use,

but still something better than just a hand cranked machine.

If he can't figure this out, his business

won't survive long.

(insects chirping) (mysterious music)

Like Maytag, Josephine Cochrane

is also facing a difficult challenge.

By 1885, she's finished her design for a dishwasher,

but doesn't know how to make it.

Josephine had her drawings, but what she didn't have

was fabrication experience.

She really had to go out and find a mechanical engineer

to build a prototype for her.

(knocking on door) (tense music)

Did anyone see you? No.

Good.

[Narrator] Refusing to give up,

Cochrane looks to a local railroad mechanic,

George Butters, for help, but it won't be easy.

Now think about the time.

It would be strange for a widowed woman

to be visited by single men throughout the day

or evening or whenever they might be doing

these innovative technical discussions or work.

So they had to do this in secret

just to protect their reputation.

Look at this.

We put a rack in this machine to hold the dishes.

The hand crank will make the wheel spin,

pumping the water up from the bottom over the dishes.

Where are the scrubbers?

No scrubbers.

Water pressure.

There were some machines in existence,

but the problem is they used rotating brushes.

Imagine running your fine China in a box through a carwash.

19th century China, even machinemade, is pretty fragile.

A scrubber is gonna chip it and break it.

So water pressure is much gentler.

Can you build this design?

I'll try.

(pensive music)

In 1915, a 36 year old engineer from Fort Wayne, Indiana

is working on an idea that, if successful,

could revolutionize the home and kitchen forever.

His name is Alfred Mellowes, and he's struggling

to solve an ancient problem, keeping food from spoiling.

Making sure that you had food that was edible

throughout the year was a major struggle.

People weren't making jam because it was, you know, fun.

People were making jam because that was how

you ate fruit during the winter months.

(tense music)

[Narrator] But by the mid1800s,

a groundbreaking invention can be found

in many American homes.

It's a wooden cabinet lined with metal,

insulated with sawdust, and loaded

with a block of ice to keep things cool.

The icebox was an invention that truly transformed

how our culture functioned, our diet.

You could put poultry, you could put meat,

you could put dairy products like milk and cheese,

and it would stay fresh for several days.

(tense music)

[Narrator] By keeping food from spoiling,

the ice box ends the daily grind of going to the market,

but it is far from a perfect solution.

They just couldn't maintain a low enough temperature

to really preserve food properly.

[Narrator] But by the late 19th century,

advancements in technology create artificial refrigeration.

Machines are built that use compressed gases

as refrigerants to keep food cold.

However, there is one major drawback.

The problem is that they're just gigantic.

They fill an entire warehouse.

There is no way to shrink a refrigerating machine down

to the size that's gonna fit in a kitchen.

[Narrator] But Alfred Mellowes believes

there has to be a way to make the home refrigerator

a reality.

A lot of the people who did develop

household refrigerators at the time

would have a refrigerator box in the kitchen,

but the actual equipment had to be located

in an adjoining room or in somebody's basement.

Mellowes thought, well, why don't I combine

all of this into one piece?

[Narrator] In 1915, Mellowes is convinced

he can construct a standalone refrigerator,

and that it could earn him a fortune.

He begins work on a compact prototype,

but size isn't the only problem he needs to solve.

Leaks in early refrigerators are not only common,

but can be deadly, thanks to refrigerants

like sulfur dioxide.

As soon as sulfur oxide combines

with any type of moisture or water,

it becomes sulfuric acid.

Breathing sulfuric acid is really bad for your lungs,

but it would also burn and corrode materials

that are in the refrigerator.

It could eat away at the structure,

causing it to collapse.

[Narrator] Mellowes believes he's found the answer

in an innovative solution.

Copper tubing.

It was lightweight and flexible

and could be run in long lengths

without a lot of joints in it which could potentially leak.

It was the ideal thing to use for his system.

And it took up less room than what had been used before,

which was usually steel piping.

[Narrator] With the flexible copper tubing,

Mellowes places the mechanical guts of the refrigerator

at the bottom, creating a single standalone unit.

After a year, Mellowes finally completes his prototype...

And gives it a name.

The Guardian.

(tense music)

Let me see.

Can we possibly fill an order this big?

[Narrator] Confident his refrigerator

will be a huge success, Mellowes moves his company

to the booming industrial hub of Detroit, Michigan

and starts production.

But manufacturing them in bulk will be a challenge,

because Mellowes hasn't worked out the economics

of producing these refrigerators at scale.

Each is handassembled, taking more than a week

to complete just one unit.

So many startups do have the great product

or the great idea, but they don't have the great operators.

A great innovator can get in the way of their own business.

They themselves end up destroying their own companies.

[Narrator] In the next two years,

Guardian will produce only about 40 machines,

and lose $34,000 doing it.

The equivalent of $850,000 today.

If Mellowes doesn't stop the bleeding soon,

his company will go bankrupt.

(tense music)

So, how are we doing, Howard?

Where's that going?

Right over there.

[Narrator] Meanwhile, Frederick Maytag

also struggles with keeping his business alive.

By 1915, although electric power

is expanding across America, it hasn't reached

the majority of Maytag's primary customers.

Farmers.

That's when he has a revelation.

Instead of electricity, what if a small gasoline motor

could be used to power a washing machine?

"See what you can do with this.

F.L."

(determined music)

Wait, what if it was removable?

That could be it.

[Narrator] The challenge is answered

with a machine called the Multimotor.

The Multimotor was a gaspowered engine

that could not only operate that washing machine,

but operate other items in their farm.

Not only is this a vast improvement over the Pastime,

but the Multimotor will power any piece of light machinery

that falls within the power limits

of this marvelous little engine.

Water pump?

It'll power the daylights out of a water pump.

[Narrator] In the first nine months

of selling the Multimotor washing machine,

Maytag has to increase production

by 125% to meet demand.

Within two years, the company produces 15,000.

But soon Maytag is in trouble again.

(tense music)

[Narrator] In an era when women's roles

are largely restricted to taking care of children

and the home, inventor Josephine Cochrane

defies all the rules.

[Josephine] Good.

Good, keep pumping.

We want the water pressure as strong as possible.

[George] I think this time it's gonna work.

[Narrator] Employing an array of pumps and water tanks,

she's designed a machine that ingeniously

uses water pressure instead of scrubbers to clean dishes.

In 1885, after months of working on a prototype,

it's time to test the machine.

Pretty darn clean.

Sure is.

And best of all, no chips!

[Narrator] But Cochrane quickly finds

that selling her machine will be much harder

than inventing it.

At around $100, the equivalent of nearly $3000 today,

Cochrane's dishwasher is a luxury item

out of reach for most households.

You could hire five kitchen maids for that,

and they could presumably do other things

like chop potatoes and sweep the floor.

And so the fact is she had to come up with another plan.

So she started to think, well, where else could use it?

Oh, hotels, restaurants.

They need dishwashers.

[Narrator] Cochrane is ready to get

her dishwasher out in the market,

but faces an obstacle that could

end her business before it begins.

However, if you were to hire

a professional manager to oversee production,

we would be happy to speak with them.

There were virtually no women who own their own companies.

Just was not common at all, and frowned upon.

You know, women weren't seen as being

capable of running businesses.

[Narrator] To have any chance of success,

Cochrane needs another way to sell her machine.

(pensive music)

They're looking for inventor submissions.

Worth a shot.

(tense music)

In American history, one of the big moments

is the Chicago World's Fair

of 1893.

These world's fairs were promotional events

for people who were, had some new idea,

and they wanted to show the world what they could do.

For an industrial kitchen, Josephine's machine

was a godsend, it saved time, it saved money.

It could wash 250 dishes in two minutes.

Human hands couldn't do that.

And all the owners of restaurants and hotels

were like, "yes, please, where do I sign?"

[Narrator] Cochrane's machine wins

a durability prize at the fair,

and her product finds a niche with hotels and restaurants.

But the question remains.

Can she bring her dishwasher to the masses?

So in her case, can you take those concepts

and be affordable?

That's the next giant step.

(pensive music)

[Narrator] Meanwhile, unlike Josephine Cochrane,

Alfred Mellowes has built a smaller appliance

that can fit inside a home.

But by 1918, he's only manufactured

about 40 refrigerators in two years.

And now his business is collapsing.

[Alfred] We can't survive another month

if things keep going like this.

[Narrator] Mellowes' company is about to fold,

unless something changes and fast.

Is this the Guardian refrigerator company?

It is, or was.

I'm Alfred Mellowes.

Pleased to meet you.

I'm William Durant.

(tense music)

Sure you are.

In the flesh.

William Durant was the creator of General Motors.

He's wellknown as Wild Billy Durant

and he's known for taking big chances

and gambling on big ideas.

My friends tell me you've had a tough go here,

but these new ice boxes, they've got potential.

Here's what I'm thinking.

I'll run the business, you concentrate on the machine.

So you would be our top engineer,

no more operating on a shoestring.

Why would a man who makes automobiles

want to make refrigerators?

Well, the car is a box with a motor.

This is just a different kind of box.

(tense music)

[Narrator] Durant ponies up today's equivalent

of nearly $1 million of his own money

to buy Mellowes' dying company.

This is a technology that's yet to be proven out,

and Durant doing something like this

is a huge gamble at the time.

Our goal is 3000 units

produced by the end of next year.

That's too many.

You have to think bigger, Alfred.

Durant was insistent that they go full steam ahead.

His attitude was damn the torpedoes, let's get this done.

Now, I don't like Guardian.

You need a new name.

Well, what would you suggest?

Well, what are we trying to do?

Make cold air.

That's all, cold air.

Not just cold air, frigid air.

Frigid air.

Frigidaire.

Frigidaire almost became another name for a refrigerator,

and when I was growing up, for example, I remember,

you know, people referring to the refrigerator

as a Frigidaire, even if it wasn't made by Frigidaire.

There are certain things that both

the product and the brand become one in the same.

Google today's a great example.

I'm gonna Google something, and that's a big win.

It's about as big as it gets.

(pensive music)

(tense music)

More than 10 years after her stunning success

at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair,

Josephine Cochrane is selling her dishwasher

to hotels and businesses across the U. S.

But Cochrane knows the big market is somewhere else.

For Cochrane, the dream of the dishwasher

is turn the corner and bring this product

down to a level that would fit in the home

and it could be affordable for the homeowner.

(pensive music) (insects chirping)

[Narrator] In addition to selling

to hotels and restaurants, Cochrane works tirelessly

for years to create a more affordable household version

that could earn her a fortune.

But it all takes a toll.

[Man] Why don't you take a break?

It's been a long day.

Josephine Cochrane was in charge.

She had her fingers in every bit of her operation.

And her health began to fail.

[Narrator] In 1913, after decades of doggedly pursuing

her dishwasher dream, Cochrane suddenly dies.

She worked up until the end.

Her official cause of death was a stroke,

but it's commonly believed that she simply died

of nervous exhaustion from running herself ragged

for so many years.

(tense music)

[Narrator] After Cochrane's death,

her company would continue selling dishwashers,

and in 1926, it's acquired by Hobart Manufacturing,

who give Cochrane's design a new name, KitchenAid,

a brand that will go on to be worth almost $200 million.

Maytag's intuition and hard work are paying off.

In 1916, his innovative gasolinepowered Multimotor

has brought the washing machine to thousands of farmers

and families without electricity.

But as electric power continues to become available

in more and more homes, competition heats up.

Rivals, like the Upton Machine Company,

one day known as Whirlpool, are growing fast.

To keep up, Maytag expands his line of electric washers,

building a new factory to compete.

But the decision is a gamble.

The company had borrowed a lot of money,

but the farm economy began to slump,

and now the company's got some real problems on its hands

as it looks to the future.

(tense music)

[Narrator] Meanwhile, William Durant

is also facing a financial catastrophe.

In 1919, his plan to quickly mass produce

3000 Frigidaire refrigerators is unraveling.

In the rush, leaks and other defects are found

that caused the entire line to shut down.

Our tests show several of the motors

consistently overheat and break down.

The assembly line will need a complete overhaul.

The refrigerators that Durant had manufactured

were a failure.

And the problem was that they did have bugs in them,

enough bugs so that the entire allotment

that they made had to be scrapped.

[Narrator] The stress from trying to meet

Durant's breakneck schedule takes its toll

on Chief Engineer Alfred Mellowes.

I am beyond exhausted.

I've given this some thought.

I'm resigning.

(tense music)

But this is your baby.

[Alfred] Not anymore.

[Narrator] With his top engineer suddenly gone,

Durant needs a plan.

(rotary phone dialing)

As the President of General Motors,

he puts his trust into the engineers

of one of the world's largest car companies

to build a reliable refrigerator.

They've had access to the newly established

General Motors research laboratories in Dayton.

So it was logical that, well, if we transfer down there,

those people have got the talent

maybe to be able to turn this thing around.

[Narrator] The GM team works tirelessly on a redesign.

What they come up with is arguably

the first modernlooking refrigerator, the Frigidaire B9.

It had adjustable shelves.

It had compartments in the doors.

It had ice cube trays...

Which meant it had a freezer compartment,

and meant that you could have cocktails

at any point in your day.

[Narrator] The first B9 weighs more than 800 pounds

and costs $775, over $11,000 today.

But the company reins in manufacturing costs,

nearly cutting the price in half, and sales explode.

So many had been sold at a profitable level

that General Motors boasted the profits from Frigidaire

have paid for all of our dividends

on our preferred stock.

(pensive music)

[Narrator] By 1920,

Frederick Maytag is in trouble,

facing hundreds of different manufacturers

in the crowded washing machine market.

And now his company owes creditors

$14 million in today's money.

By the dawn of the 1920s, Maytag's in his sixties,

and his company is almost on the verge bankruptcy.

[Narrator] But Maytag's top engineer isn't giving up.

He realizes saving the company

means coming up with an innovation

to set their washing machines apart

from every other manufacturer.

(tense music)

[Howard] This is the key.

This is a boat motor. I know.

But what does it do under the water?

There are propellers that create currents.

I can't believe I didn't see this before.

Our agitator shouldn't be at the top of the tub.

It needs to be under the water, on the bottom.

(pensive music)

The longstanding technology in terms

of washing clothes was the agitator in the lid

and the cleaning process was friction.

Snyder recognized a whole different way to clean clothes.

What that did, as it spun around,

it created current, and that water moving

against the fabrics is what was gonna clean the clothes

even better than they had in the past.

And that's the same technology that we have

in our washing machines today.

[Narrator] Soon, Maytag unveils

a new electric washer called the model 80,

also known as the Gyrafoam.

If this one doesn't sell, his company will likely go under.

Gyrafoam.

We'll say it's a tempest in a tub.

That's good.

(pensive music)

[Narrator] After its release in 1922,

the Gyrafoam is an instant hit.

By 1926, Maytag is selling onethird

of all washing machines in America,

with sales of nearly $60 million, over $800 million today

Maytag goes on to be one of the largest

manufacturers of washing machines until 2006,

when the company is purchased by their top competitor,

Whirlpool, for $1.7 billion.

I cannot imagine my life without a washing machine.

I cannot imagine the amount of time

I would be spending doing all of those chores

if I didn't have all of these magical appliances

in my house.

[Narrator] Meanwhile, washing machines aren't the only

appliance changing lives in American homes.

By the end of the 1930s, nearly 50% of households

have refrigerators.

More and more companies got into the refrigerator business

because they saw a market, and they all had

slightly different models.

Kelvinator was an important competitor.

Sears sold its own sort of strippeddown cheap refrigerator

called the Cold Spot.

(tense music)

[Narrator] Despite the competition, by 1929,

Frigidaire is on pace to sell a million refrigerators,

but it happens without the visionary who got them there.

Stock problems along with an angry board of directors

force William Durant out of General Motors in 1920.

Durant tries other ventures, but the man called Wild Billy

never finds his way back to the top.

After William Durant left the employ of General Motors,

his various spendthrift ways caught up with him.

Ultimately, he became totally bankrupt and passed away,

really as pretty much a pauper.

[Narrator] By 1956, Frigidaire produces

its 20 millionth refrigerator.

30 years later, the company is sold

to European appliance maker Electrolux for $773 million.

We can't say that Durant invented

the household refrigerator, but he was

certainly an important part of its success.

[Narrator] Today, Americans buy

about 8 million refrigerators, 10 million washing machines,

and 9 million dishwashers each year,

spending $40 billion annually on comforts

that previous generations could only dream of.

I'm not sure the young people today

fully appreciate what it took for them

to open a fridge and get something cold.

And when you throw your clothes in that washing machine,

and the dishwasher, our lives are so convenient now,

but there was a time when it wasn't that easy.

I don't think most people give it a second thought,

but they should, because the machines

that made America made you.

(dramatic music)

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