Ariel (detergent) Automatic" powder. Though with the increasing popularity of automatic front-loading washing machines, a suitable low-suds variant "Ariel Automatic" was eventually launched in the early 1980s. The mid-eighties saw the range expanding to encompass liquid detergent and compact powder. The compact powder was originally known as "Ariel Ultra"; and was subsequently reformulated into the nineties as "Ariel Future". This was possibly in response to Unilever's launch of the ultimately doomed "Persil Power", which was seen to damage clothes. Compact powders never proved popular in the UK, so when the tablet variant appeared in July 1999, the compact version disappeared. In 2003,
Laundry detergent The Italians used a mix of sulfur and water with charcoal to clean cloth. Egyptians added ashes and silicates to soften water. Soaps were the first detergents. The detergent effects of certain synthetic surfactants were noted in Germany in 1917, in response to shortages of soap during World War I. In the 1930s, commercially viable routes to fatty alcohols were developed, and these new materials were converted to their sulfate esters, key ingredients in the commercially important German brand FEWA, produced by BASF, and Dreft, the U.S. brand produced by Procter and Gamble. Such detergents were mainly used in industry