What you are looking at is an old "American" side-load split-pocket washer. Basically a horizontal axis machine with the loading doors on the side. If you look to the right of the operator, you will see the old belt and pulley system that powered the machine. Since the machines back then didn't have an extract cycle, they would put them into a top load extractor and spin the water out. Surprisingly the side loader hasn't changed much with the exception of built in extract and a micro. Almost every manufacturer has one similar. Awesome pic.

My home in 1955-1957, a Navy destroyer, had one of these (or very similar) in the ship's laundry.

This one's kind of a puzzler. The machine could be a large rotating drum that was used to break down old rags into fiber, for the making of "rag paper." The rags the the man is feeding into into it seem to be too far gone for any other use. Note all the pipes and valves, and apparently a vertical boiler in the background: whatever the operation was for, it was steam-powered.

[As noted in the caption, this is a washing machine. The rags were used to wipe the ink off intaglio printing plates. - Dave]