Here's another image scanned from Mom's first photo album. This one is undated and includes no helpful metadata (that is, no one has written any names, times or places on the back). If you look at the wheels driving the belt, you can see that they're spinning! Cool. Truth be told, though, I don't understand the technology we're looking at. Is that big tub a washing machine?
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That's likely enough a washing machine. The spindles on the end facing us are a wringer dryer. On the far right are the drive belts. Possibly they were hooked up to a truck (see the movie "Predator") but more likely a tractor with a power take-off. The PTO was either a drive shaft that extended out the back of the tractor, or just a wheel that was raised by putting its axle up on a block.
You hook the drive band to the PTO and run the tractor in place. The PTO drives the band which drives the washing machine (or whatever). It's the USB cable of the early 1900's. The washing would have been much easier with this set-up, although it would be some work to get it going properly. We had a similar machine on our family farm as well. I've only seen them running in museums, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_take-off
Just a note to add that Mom tells me this is Alice Etsell, my great-grandmother.
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