MODERN MARVELS: HOUSEHOLD WONDERS (TV)
Summary
One in this documentary series which explains the often extraordinary stories of how things in the modern world are possible and came to be. This episode focuses on home appliances and how they affected American society. The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century gave rise to a new middle class, made up of former servants who "fled" from their grueling household jobs and went to work in the factories, as explained by Ruth Schwartz Cowan (history professor, State University of New York). Centuries of cooking simple meals over an open hearth came to an end with the invention of the stove, starting with Benjamin Franklin's creation of a room-warming device and the development of pig iron. The earliest stoves were oversized but could be transported on wagons as settlers moved further west, and though many people still preferred the "homey" quality of a fireplace, standard meals became more complex as a result of the new technology, and coal, which had to be purchased, became necessary to power the stoves. Author Susan Strasser explains how, at the end of World War II, scientist Percy Spencer discovered that high-frequency radio waves housed in a metal box could heat food very quickly, leading to the creation of the microwave oven.
Historian Shelley Nickles explains how Thomas Edison's 1879 invention of the lightbulb had an effect only on the wealthiest of households at first, though the sewing machine revolutionized women's most common and arduous "work," formerly done by hand. Barthélemy Thimonnier patented a machine that created 200 stitches per minute in 1830, though angry tailors burned down his factories twice. In Boston, sickly mechanic Elias Howe Jr. devised a better machine and fought for a patent, battling actor and inventor Isaac Singer, whose similar machines were made "affordable" to the masses by payment installment plans, as noted by Russell Flinchum (curator, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum), though Howe eventually made over two million dollars from his creation. The use of ice to preserve food became commercialized in the 19th century, though the process of "harvesting" ice from frozen rivers was arduous and expensive, and complicated further by the ice's habit of melting. As people moved further into America and away from harvesting spots, they required other methods of cooling, and the earliest refrigerators, made of wood, were both large and dangerous. Eventually compression machines were invented, though as Carolyn Goldstein (curator, National Building Museum) explains, they were loud, expensive and required frequent servicing. A race developed in the 1920s between electric and gas refrigerators, and General Electric won out with its development of the Monitor-Top icebox, which used an evaporation coil to cool the air within.
By World War II, 45% of American homes had refrigerators, and the companies, including Frigidaire, took inspiration from the "fashionable" automobile industry and made the appliances aesthetically pleasing and colorful. The air conditioner came into being when, in the sweltering summer of 1881, the mortally wounded President Garfield required a cooling device to aid his recovery, and a fan was rigged with ice to lower the room's temperature by twenty degrees. Two decades later, Willis Haviland Carrier created a mechanical version, and soon movie theatres and even the House of Representatives and the Senate boasted in-house cooling units. Freon was later used to develop room and window units, which became popular in the 1950s. The washing machine provided considerable "liberation" to the housewives who typically spent entire days on the backbreaking chore; the 1800s saw thousands of varying patents for machines powered first by a crank, then by a rotary, and eventually an agitator within a drum, refined by the Maytag company. Sears & Roebuck hired Henry Dreyfuss to make the appliance visually pleasing, and he opted to hide the moving parts within an attractive shell. In 1907, allergy-plagued janitor James Murray Spangler experimented with a fan motor and a pillowcase and created the first vacuum cleaner, aided by his cousin William Hoover, who bought the patent. Author Victoria Matranga explains how the heavy devices were sold door-to-door and equipped with a train-like headlamp. The toaster appeared in the late 1800s and was "plugged in" by 1910, and often featured secondary devices like percolators. The mixer, first known as a beater, complemented the invention of the stove by aiding in the creation of baked goods such as cakes. When a motor was added in 1910, they too were sold door-to-door, often by women, and the Sunbeam Mix Master of 1930 was deemed a "miracle." The program closes by suggesting that the "dream kitchen" of the future might be no kitchen at all, "freeing" men and women from arduous cooking and cleaning chores and allowing more time for family—and television. Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: History Channel
- DATE: September 14, 1997 8:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:50:00
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: B:58147
- GENRE: Education/Information
- SUBJECT HEADING: Education/Information; Technological innovations; History
- SERIES RUN: History Channel - TV series, 1995-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Charlie Maday … Executive Producer
- Don Cambou … Supervising Producer
- Bruce Nash … Producer, Created by
- Pam Moore … Producer, Writer
- Luke Ellis … Associate Producer
- Alan Ett … Music by
- Harlan Saperstein … Narrator
- Ruth Schwartz Cowan … Interviewee
- Susan Strasser … Interviewee
- Shelley Nickles … Interviewee
- Russell Flinchum … Interviewee
- Carolyn Goldstein … Interviewee
- Victoria Matranga … Interviewee
- Willis Haviland Carrier
- Henry Dreyfuss
- Thomas Edison
- Benjamin Franklin
- James A. Garfield
- William Henry Hoover
- Elias Howe Jr.
- Isaac Singer
- James Murray Spangler
- Percy Spencer
- Barthélemy Thimonnier