“Electric” Towel is Latest.
The new municipal building at Washington, D. C., is equipped with “electro towels,” devised by its superintendent, J. M. Ward. The electro towel is simply an electric hand dryer. It looks like a rectangular box with the front face knocked out and set on a pedestal which brings it about waist-high. The box is large enough to accommodate an ordinary pair of hands. There is an electric-heating device in the stand and a blower which forces the air through ducts into the box on top, where the hands are held while drying. A lever, operated by the foot, turns the current of hot air into it and sets the blower at work.
Superintendent Ward contends that as the lever is operated by the foot and the hands are merely extended into the box through the open front they come into contact with no part of the device, and so the operation is perfectly sanitary. It takes thirty seconds to dry hands in this way.