Question

how did the washing machine transform the daily lives and the worldview of lower class, middle class, and upper class people, if at all?

Answer 1

The invention of the washing machine gave women back a vast amount of time. Free from the shackles of laundry, many women found themselves with enough time to enter the labour market.

By entering the labour market, the status of women in society began to change. Women could now make an independent living, meaning that they no longer had to rely on provision from men. This played a huge role in men and women being perceived as equals in society.

It is because of this changed perception of women in home and workplace that makes Ha-Joon Chang and Hans Rosling believe that the washing machine is one of the most important inventions of all time.

In an attempt to improve the working conditions of the female laundry workers and ensure a healthier water supply for the city, the municipal government installed public laundry washbasins made out of stone and cement. Wealthier families living in large houses in residential neighborhoods could afford to have laundry washbasins installed in their homes—taking advantage of being connected to the municipal aqueduct—and usually had ample space in courtyards for a laundry room. The public laundry washbasins made it possible for the female laundry workers to avoid direct contact with river water, which was channeled through a network of tanks, pipes, and faucets into the public laundries. Doing laundry at home became a social trend that paralleled the physical separation between the river and the female laundry workers. The socializing once enjoyed by female laundry workers on the riverbanks now took place in the collective spaces created by the public laundries and their rows of washbasins; meanwhile, washing laundry at home had the opposite effect, as it became a much more private and solitary affair.

BY above means It had affected the daily life of Poor, Middle and Upper Middle Class