Laundry management : a handbook for use in private and public laundries including descriptive accounts of modern machinery and appliances for laundry work.

Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Laundry management : a handbook for use in private and public laundries including descriptive accounts of modern machinery and appliances for laundry work. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of roller shirt and collar ironing machines. Some of them have a metal bed and a roller, others two or more rollers and no bed. In many of these machines the operator stands or sits on a raised platform, which is connected by levers with the rollers, and thus the pressure is put on and off instantly by a person stepping off or on the board. The bed plates of American roller ironing machines are made of all kinds of shapes, to suit collar and cuff ironing, shirt bosom polishing, etc. They also have special machines for ironing shirt collar bands, for goffering, frilling, shaping and folding collars, etc. There is a clever little machine for using an ordinary box or a special gas-heated iron, where the pressure is done by mechanism, but the guiding by hand. The American pattern is composed of a metal plate mounted on four legs, and with an upright standard, holding over the ironing plate a jointed arm; the iron is fitted to this arm, which is pressed tightly down upon the plate by means of a spiral spring attached from the arm to the standard. The ironing plate is lifted and lowered by a lever or a treadle. In the English patent (Bash’s “ Handy Ironer”) the iron is heated by steam, and pressed down on the ironing plate by levers connected with a treadle. In this way ironing is rendered much easier and less fatiguing; the pressure being mechanical, the operator has only to pull, push, and guide the iron in any desired direction. In most high-class laundries small machine ironers are used for small goods, but not for finishing collars and shirts. These are only blocked by these machines, and the finishing touches are done by hand irons. It is argued that by this method the collars and shirts get a much better polish than if entirely ironed by machines. Laundry engineers, however, claim for many of their machines the power of giving the highest finish