“A few words about washing,” the Lewes newspaper, Breakwater Light, commented in 1873, “Put your clothes in a good suds the day before washing, in the morning wash out of the water, warming it by the ...

The Columbus Washboard Co. sold more than a million boards a year in its 1940s heyday. That was when wood-and-corrugated-steel boards were used for scrubbing clothing and linens by hand in a washtub ...