Selby decoded

Nothing too hard to figure out, but I found it interesting as a bit of antique technology.

The machines finally stopped and [Lucy] told the children to sit right there and she emptied the machines then sat back on the bench and waited to use the extractor. While she waited a woman came in with a cart of clothes and asked if she could use the extractor, the one in her laundromat across the way broke down. The woman in charge told her she would have to wait until all her people were finished, that she couldnt let people from other buildings come in here and use her extractor until her people were finished and she didnt know if theyd be finished in time, it was getting late and there were a awful lot of people waiting and she had to close soon.

—Hubert Selby, Jr., Last Exit to Brooklyn (1957), pp. 260-261

There are several online definitions of extractor that fit the specific sense of a laundry machine more advanced than a wringer, among them Infoplease’s “a centrifuge for spinning wet laundry so as to remove excess water”.