• Home
• •
• Check Stock
• •
• Recent News
• •
• Site Map
• •
• Ordering
• •
• Sample Cart
• •
• Contact Us

There’s a keystone in every great invention.

Battery Contacts & Holders	Fuse Clips	Standoffs & Spacers	Metal Dome Switches

The holidays don’t really start until the front door opens and the college kids arrive behind a mountain of duffel bags, green garbage bags and laundry baskets. Somewhere after sorting out the heap of hoodies, mismatched socks, and list of unidentifiable stains, is the task of methodically washing and prepping for the next semester. Thanks to the modern day washing machine, this task is a manageable one.

Unlike most inventions, the washing machine was not invented by a single person in a specific year. It evolved from 18th-century hand-powered tubs into today’s microcontroller-driven smart appliances. For more than two centuries, inventors in Europe and North America gradually mechanized scrubbing, adding rotating drums, then electric motors and electronic control, producing the front-load and top-load machines now found in most homes and laundromats.

The first known mechanical washing machine concepts appeared in Europe in the 1700s. These included a hand-powered mechanism to agitate clothes in a tub presented in 1767, by German scholar Jacob Christian Schäffer and ideas from the 1780s in England using rotating drum ideas. In 1797, Nathaniel Briggs of New Hampshire received the first U.S. patent for a washing machine (a wooden tub operated by hand.)

From Hand-crank to Electric

By the mid-1800s, inventors were focusing on rotating drums and wringers to reduce labor. James King in the United States patented a drum-based, hand-cranked washer in 1851, an important step toward the modern layout with a cylindrical basket. Soon after, Hamilton Smith patented a rotary machine in 1858, refining the idea of continuous rotation for better cleaning.

The first fully electric washer used an electric motor to drive a drum, eliminating hand-cranking.?? The THOR was introduced in 1908 by the Hurley Machine Company of Chicago and is commonly credited as the first electric washer.

Rise of automatic machines

Between the 1920s and 1930s as electric power became common in homes, and engineers designed more reliable motors that would not fail when exposed to spilled water, washing machines spread rapidly in industrialized countries.

In 1937, an engineer John Chamberlain, working for Bendix patented a front-loading machine that could wash, rinse, and spin automatically in one cycle, widely regarded as the first domestic automatic washer. By the late 1940s and 1950s, automatic top-loaders and front-loaders with timers and multiple programs were mass-market products in North America and Europe.

During the second half of the 20th century, improvements focused on reliability, safety, and convenience: better suspensions to reduce vibration, spin cycles fast enough to remove more water, and enamel or stainless tubs that resisted corrosion. Mechanical electromechanical timers with cams and switches became the “brain” of the machine, stepping through soak, wash, rinse, and spin with simple on-off control of motors, pumps, and valves.

Modern electronics and smart control

From the late 1970s onward, microchips began to replace mechanical timers, allowing more precise control of water temperature, drum speed, and cycle time. Modern washers now use microcontroller-based control boards that read sensors for water level, temperature, drum position, foam, imbalance, and even load weight to adjust how the cycle runs.

Today’s high-end machines often feature inverter-driven motors, where electronic power circuits convert household AC to controlled DC and vary motor speed for gentle or intensive wash, improving energy efficiency and reducing noise. Touch panels, memory for custom programs, self-diagnostics, and Wi-Fi connectivity turn washing machines into full embedded systems, while still performing the age-old job of getting clothes clean; leaving more time for mom to spend with the family during the holidays.

Keystone Electronics supplies many of the small electromechanical parts that help modern washing machines’ electronic systems stay powered, protected, and mechanically secure. These parts typically sit on or around the machine’s control boards, motor drives, user-interface electronics, and power-entry circuits rather than in direct contact with water or moving drums.? Battery clips, contacts, and holders are used where a board needs a replaceable backup or memory-hold battery, such as real-time clocks, configuration memory, or control-panel modules. Fuse clips and holders mount cartridge or mini fuses that protect electronics and motors from overcurrent or short-circuit events and provide serviceable protection stages in motor-drive inverters, power supplies, and control boards.

Keystone products including Battery Clips, Contacts & Holders, Fuse Clips & Fuse Holders, Standoffs and Spacers, Quick-fit Terminals, and Metal “Key-pad” Dome Switches quietly support the brains of today’s washing machines and are selected for reliability under shock, vibration and temperature changes.