Here is an article from 1972 on the history of the Washing Machine...

The Tale of the Tub

So...if your wife you'd like to spare,
aching muscles, graying hair,
and that woe-begotten air,
just get her a laundry pair!...

Long after our ancestral grand mothers learned how to weave cloth and to substitute woven garments for skins, they still washed their clothes as their mothers and grandmothers had done on the bank of the river. And then, one day in that distant past, someone invented the washtub and the scrubbing board! That meant that at long last the job of washing could be moved from the river bank to the home.

Of course, at the river bank the sand that helped to remove some of the soil was handy. But who wanted to carry sand into the house? So (and we wonder if this wasn't some very inventive cook) someone discovered that if you combined lye and tallow together you'd get a substance that would clean clothes and they called it soap!

Still and all, washing even with the handy wash tub, scrubbing board, and soap was no picnic. Finally, an inventive fellow named Mr. Nathaniel Briggs from up New Hampshire way came up with a "washing machine" which he was granted a patent for in 1797.

Improvements were made on Mr. Briggs' wonderful machine during the next hundred years. Of course, washtubs were, for the most part, made of wood and the machine had to be operated by hand. Still, it was a lot easier on the back than the scrubbing board! A 1905 Sears Roebuck catalog listed a number of these washing machines ranging in price from $1.98 to $5.10. One model moved with the ancient rhythm of the cradle and was advertised: "Rocks like a cradle and almost as easily. You can do your washing sitting on a chair."

The following year 1906 the Hurley Machine Company harnessed that new wonder, ELECTRICITY, and manufactured the very first electric washing machine. It was called the "Thor" and featured a chain drive. The Maytag "Pastime" model which came out a year later was a hand-operated machine. It was not electrified until 1917.

The first electric washer was produced by the Hurley Machine Company of Chicago.
Called the "Thor" by its makers, it was a chain-driven machine and presented a
safety hazard to the ladies in long skirts that operated them.

There were a large number of hand operated models on the market about the same time. The first one marketed by Maytag in 1907 had a horizontal flywheel and a wooden tub.