Most of the photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs, 20 to 200 megabytes in size) from the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) Many were digitized by LOC contractors using a Sinar studio back. They are adjusted by your webmaster for contrast and color in Photoshop before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here.

January 1939. "Housewife boiling clothes -- Chicot Farms, Arkansas." Note the primitive nature of this washer -- it doesn't even have a "simmer" setting. 35mm nitrate negative by Russell Lee, Farm Security Administration. View full size.
My maternal grandmother had a Maytag wringer, (originally gasoline-engined, but converted to electric). We spent a summer with her when I was six. Once when the Maytag blinked, we washed in her identical pot and wrung by hand. I remember adding "bluing" to the rinse to de-yellow the whites. She was a little more fashionable than this woman. But my paternal grandmother, who lived for some years in Arkansas, was not. I had to look twice to make sure this wasn't her. I can't say definitively not.
Today's Top 5