The rotaries are quite handy where they fit your space, since you don't have to run between the basket and the next spot on the line to hang, or take down, the clothes (for the ones that turn fairly easily). A few farmsteads with plenty of space for whatever they wanted did use them around my area some years ago, and the disappearance may be more due to gas/electric "clothes dryers" than to decisions about how to hang stuff outdoors.

One real old-timer 40 years ago had a sort of "windmill" attachment that rotated the lines, mostly pretty slowly, while the clothes dried. He claimed it discouraged the birds from sitting on the lines and crapping on the clothes, but I'm not sure it had much real effect; although I'm sure he had fun building it and I know he had fun "braggin' it up."

The "rope and pulley" kind isn't well suited to our climate, since it requires a flexible rope, and even with new "plastic" ropes or plastic sheathed "cable," none will last more than barely a year, if that, in our typical sunbeams. The most common here is a "T-Post" with three or four heavy (to hold the clothespins) solid steel wires. (And maw used to send a kid out with a wire brush, a steel wool pad, and a big soppy wet rag to clean the birdy traces off before she hung stuff out - until the kids got tall enough to keep from draggin the laundry on the ground when they hung it.)

John