How smart is your smart technology?

Imagine hand-washing your clothes in outdoor tubs, stomping on them with your feet, and brushing them with the skin of a hedgehog, (yes, the spiny mammal) before placing them in a special basket called a viminea cavea.

That’s what ancient Romans had to do for laundry, which often times yielded little results for a lot of work. Today, smart technology has allowed folks to optimize their washing experience to target specific stains and automatically dispense detergent, all while playing a 90s playlist. How did we go from cleaning our clothes with Sonic to playing the video game theme song on our washer?

In the 1700s, long before GE Profile transformed how to do laundry, muscle power was necessary to remove the stains and dirt from clothing often made of wool clothing. An earlier stain remover did exist, one that used animal fat or chamber lye to treat specific stains at home before taking the clothes to the river. This whitening process was called “bucking” and was done once every few months. However, a not-so-fun fact, that chamber lye is communal urine.

In ancient Rome, the task of doing laundry was such a physically exhausting process that it was delegated to men called fullones. These washermen did the laundry for practically the whole city. This was essentially the birthplace of laundromats.

In 1910, along came Thor. Not the Asgardian god of Thunder, but instead one of the first electrically powered washers manufactured in the United States. Designed by engineer Alva J. Fisher, the idea of a series of blades that move in both a horizontal and vertical motion to wash clothes was revolutionary.

Soon after, during World War I and World War II, the old method of animal and vegetable fats to make soap was replaced by an industrial one that used fatty alcohols instead. Chemists began to synthesize raw materials with chemicals, which later became known as “detergents.” By 1960, stain removers were introduced, and two decades later, consumers were able to control the water temperature in washers. As decades passed, the development of products advanced to provide convenient cleaning options such as liquid laundry packets and dissolvable scent-boosting beads.

While a valuable modern necessity, some modern washing machine designs are notoriously noisy, cause clothes to be ripped, and don’t have stain-targeting capabilities. Compared to top-load traditional washers, GE Profile Washer’s latest innovation tackles those issues and more.

The smart sensors measure dirt and detergent levels through AI technology that optimizes fabric care. Through SmartDispense technology, water levels are optimized to ensure a precise amount of soap is dispensed, saving folks from guessing and potentially wasting water and detergent. Smart Wash analyzes and senses dirt to eliminate it. The adaptive intelligence learns the consumer’s cleaning tendencies to maximize cleaning power and fabric care.

Antimicrobial technology built into the washer’s components protect it from odor-causing bacteria, thus extending the life of your washer. And if you don’t feel like manually pressing any buttons, Voice Assistant with Alexa built-in allows consumers to adjust performance levels.

With innovations like the GE Profile, laundry has gone from mundane and difficult to the convenient and quick. Also, much safer for hedgehogs. Civilization went from guessing what day would be good to do laundry outdoors to asking the washing machine what the weather is like while the second cycle begins. Now, that’s smarter cleaning.