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Appliances large and small promise to reduce drudgery.

The term "industrial innovation" is reminiscent of 3D printing or robots working on factory assembly lines. However, although most people today take washing machines and refrigerators for granted, these machines completely changed people's daily lives a century ago.

The introduction of tap water and electricity laid the foundation for a thorough social and cultural change, and made labor-saving equipment possible to solve daily housework. Household appliances eliminate the need to cook on a fireplace or coal-burning stove or spend a full day a week washing clothes. These machines in particular allow women more time to engage in activities outside the home-from paid work to higher education to leisure activities. By doing so, they helped strengthen the growing middle class.

Here is how six game-changing family inventions were born.

Read more: These women taught Americans during the Great Depression to use electricity

In the early 20th century, food poisoning in the United States was on the rise. Food was getting farther and farther from farms to shops and homes, and more and more food was contaminated, leading to various diseases from botulism to typhoid fever. Throughout the 19th century, reducing food spoilage involved harvesting and storing ice cubes, which were used for a variety of purposes from containers to household "ice boxes". But ice consumption has reached unsustainable levels, and the source of ice is increasingly polluted by industry.

Engineers found a way to use compressed gas as an artificial refrigerant on a commercial scale, but Alfred Mellowes of Fort Wayne, Indiana designed the first compact household refrigerator in 1915. William Durant, then president of General Motors, acquired this fledgling company, and the company has been struggling to keep up with orders. His team improved the design and began to assemble the new Frigidaire on an assembly line in Detroit.

Watch: Watch the full episode of "The Machine That Made America" ​​online now, and watch the new episode on Sunday 9/8c.

Demonstration of early dishwashers c. 1921

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Josephine Cochran (sometimes called Cochrane) was tired of spending hours washing her hands after the dinner party to wash the fine chinaware in her house and invented the first commercially successful dishwasher. "If no one else wants to invent (it), I will do it myself," the recent widow resolved. In 1886, after using her initials instead of her full name to disguise her gender in her application, she obtained the first patent for her device in 1886, which relied on water pressure instead of a scrubber . Cochrane turned to mechanic George Butters and asked her to build a prototype in a shed near her home in Shelbyville, Illinois. In 1893, the Garis-Cochran dishwasher won an award at the Chicago World's Fair. The judges praised it for "the best mechanical structure, durability and adaptability to its working line." By 1898, Cochrane had opened its own factory. Models sell for up to US$300, and most of the customers are hotels and restaurants.

In the 1920s, advertisements described these devices as "electric dishwashers suitable for household use", allowing wealthy families to "retain the best servants." But until after World War II, prices made most American families inaccessible to them.

Watch: 101 inventions that changed the world on HISTORY Vault

In the early 20th century, most women probably spent a whole day washing (and drying) family clothes by hand, using large pots of boiling water and scrubbing boards. A lucky woman may have a wringer, operated with a manual crank, to remove excess water before hanging the clothes on the rope to dry. However, it usually takes hours of intensive labor to complete the entire load.

Then there was Frederick Maytag, a partner in the farm equipment business. In 1907, he was looking for new products to sell to help the company weather the huge cyclical fluctuations in agriculture. Maytag designed a hand-operated washing machine to reduce the burden on the farm housewife. By 1911, he had found a way to use electricity or gasoline to power new inventions. "Gyrofoam" was the first washing machine that used a blender to wash clothes in aluminum tubs and debuted in 1922. The modern clothes dryer (a device powered by electricity, rather than a ventilation device that relies on an open flame to dry clothes) will soon arrive.

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The broom and carpet beater did not finish their work. Ives McGaffey wrote in a 1869 patent application for a carpet sweeper: "The accumulation of dust and dirt in the house is a great annoyance to all good housekeepers, relying on manual cranks to generate suction." The next generation of vacuum cleaners It is designed to use gasoline and is very large, many of which are pulled into the street by carriages. In 1911, before the coronation of Edward VII, a vacuum cleaner named "Puffing Billy" even cleaned Westminster Abbey. This modern vacuum cleaner that uses electricity to drive suction is the idea of ​​Ohio department store janitor James Murray Spangler, who turned to ordinary household items (using pillowcases as the first vacuum bag) to design an efficient machine. In 1908, when Spangler's cousin and her husbands Susan and William Hoover bought patents from inventors who were struggling with money, a household appliance brand was born.

Read more: How Edison, Tesla and Westinghouse are fighting for American electrification

An undated advertisement with a vignette depicting modern, electric housekeeping. 

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The cumbersome chore of heating and reheating a heavy iron on the stove or on the fire to smooth out wrinkled clothes may take longer than washing clothes. Therefore, it is no wonder that countless inventors are scrambling to devise a more efficient and less sweaty way of using electricity. In 1882, Henry W. Seely of New York applied for the first patent for electric irons; within ten years, new innovations enabled users to control heat levels and largely eliminate unsightly scorch marks. Sarah Boone, a black tailor and inventor, found a way to make this new invention more handy. She designed the prototype of today's ironing board and became one of the first black women to be patented in 1892.

Anyone who has tried to knead bread or beat egg whites by hand knows how arduous these tasks are and how much time and effort can be saved by using an electric mixer. Therefore, it is no wonder that countless creative people who started nearly two centuries ago set out to find some kind of solution to this kind of drudgery. A manual whisk can speed up the process of mixing sugar, milk and egg whites to make frosting for cakes. The black inventor Willie Johnson took it a step further in 1884 and designed a device driven by a gear device, a pulley and a stirrer. Home electrification made Rufus M. Eastman's pioneering electric mixer possible. By the beginning of the 20th century, stand mixers had become one of the most popular home innovations; the wives of KitchenAid executives tried their husbands' appliances in their homes and praised them. In the 1930s, it was discovered that movie star Ginger Rogers was lining up to buy one of the must-have gadgets.

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