But prior to the washing machine, in warmer countries at least, people went to the river to wash their clothes, or to a communal, purpose built washing place. There they would find either the peace and tranquillity of nature or companionship with the other people doing their washing.

This is not to romanticise the process, I know only too well how much your knuckles can ache with the cold from rinsing clothes in river water. My point is that by making life more comfortable in one respect we have lost some of it’s richness – which on some level we need to be fully alive

It was a grueling job, requiring one to lug in loads of water from the well, heat it, and I believe, if my memory serves, it took something like 7 loads of water for each load to “do it right” including blueing and starch, if you followed the household gurus of the day.. It took an entire day, here in the US, Mondays, and we ate the Sunday left-overs.

Public laundries were quite energy efficient, I understand, but just didnt’ make the appliance manufacturers as wealthy as making sure each home had their own, and so it was capitalism, not energy efficiency, that guided that choice.

One thing women of that era had, however, was the ability to chat with each other, on Mondays, over the “clothes lines,” or while lugging yet another pail of water into the house. That stopped when we could do laundry ‘any day’ and in the privacy of our own homes.

Still, it wouldn’t be the first appliance I’d part with.

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Thanks for the Zeer pot I’ll be looking into these.

Is the washing machine really the best humanity could do in the most explosive century of growth we’re ever likely to have?!

Admittedly you were probably biased by the piles of puked-on clothes, but that’s not a common scenario (at least for your sake, I hope not). Keeping food from going off is a common scenario, everyday in fact.

My vote goes to the frig.

That’s quite a statement you made – “perhaps the single most important invention of the 20th century”!

The ‘lover of a good challenge’ in me instantly set out to find something more important… but I’m struggling! Of course it does depend on one’s outlook and is highly subjective… My criteria would be ‘inventions that free humans from daily drudgery without adverse impacts on sustainability’. Hence, whilst ‘nuclear weapons’ are obviously very important – they’re not very useful. This list from Wikipedia is a good starting point.

Some people would argue that things like the Haber process (for making Nitrogen fertilisers) are very important – but in my view, anything that leads to increased population should be discounted!

I was tempted to say ‘LSD’ but that would be silly! As would the ‘bazooka’ or the ‘leaf blower’…

As a computer type it’s interesting how highly rated the various IT related inventions are in many lists. But in the big scheme of things they fall short for me. As IT doesn’t really remove drudgery and toil.

I did wonder about ‘Permaculture’ – but it’s not really an invention in the sense discussed.

So perhaps you’re right – I hereby cast my vote for most important invention (as loosely defined above) of the 20th century as ‘Washing Machine’ too – unless someone can convince me otherwise!