A washing machine is a machine designed to launder clothing. Modern-day home appliances use electric power to automatically clean clothes. The term is mostly applied to machines that use water as opposed to dry cleaning or ultrasonic cleaners. The user adds laundry detergent, which is sold in liquid, powder, or dehydrated sheet form, to the wash water.
LG washing machine (c. 2010)
A fulling mill from Georg Andreas Böckler's Theatrum Machinarum Novum, 1661
A 1923 electric Miele washing machine with a built-in mangle for drying
The Washing Machine Museum in Mineral Wells, Texas
Laundry is the washing of clothing and other textiles, and, more broadly, their drying and ironing as well. Laundry has been part of history since humans began to wear clothes, so the methods by which different cultures have dealt with this universal human need are of interest to several branches of scholarship.
Laundry is hung to dry above an Italian street.
A self-service laundry in Paris
Laundry in the river in Abidjan, 2006
Washhouse in Sanremo, Italy, at about the turn of the 20th century