Clothes Dryer

A clothes dryer is an appliance that removes moisture from washed clothing, bedding and other textiles, usually right after they come out of the washing machine. Most modern dryers use a rotating drum, or tumbler, through which heated air is circulated to evaporate the moisture while the drum turns, with the heat coming from a gas flame or an electric element such as nichrome wire. A hand-cranked dryer appeared as early as 1800, built by the French inventor M. Pochon; the American inventor George T. Sampson patented an automatic version in 1892 that held clothes in a frame over a stove, electric dryers followed with Henry W. Altorfer's 1937 patent, and the industrial designer Brooks Stevens added a glass window to his own design in the early 1940s.