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Domestic Appliances
As you read this on your computer, chances are that you're surrounded by other technical innovations in your home: fridge, freezer, washing machine, dishwasher, etc. They're just everyday conveniences which most of us take for granted. But even these humble objects have interesting histories if you care to delve a little into the past. Some of them have been around for longer than you might expect. In many cases, the technology was there but the price of these goods was prohibitive. It was also the case that most houses didn't have the necessary infrastructure to make use of the emerging technologies. Many rural homes in the UK didn't have running water until well into the twentieth century. The microwave has always struck me as a very 1970s innovation. Yet it actually saw the light of day in 1947! The key technological advance which made it possible was the cavity magnetron, which was developed in order to enable aircraft to carry radar equipment on board during the Second World War. The earliest radar equipment, used by the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain, used long wavelengths and thus needed large masts to generate the radio waves. The cavity magnetron reduced the wavelengths to a matter of centimetres. (In fact, "magnetron" is the word the Dutch use for a microwave oven.) Washing machines were perhaps the most significant innovation for the household. Before their arrival, washdays literally did take a day or even more, as clothes had to be scrubbed by hand. At best, the housewife (and it invariably was women's work in those days) had a washtub and a wash dolly (a contraption a bit like a wooden stool with a long broomstick through it) to agitate the clothes - but it was still hard physical labour. And this went on right up into the early twentieth century, even though the first patent for a washing and wringing machine was granted in 1691. It wasn't until 1906 that the first electric washing machine went into mass production; and it took another 31 years before Bendix came up with their automatic machine. (And even that had to be bolted to the floor because it vibrated so much.) One thing I've noticed is that when it comes to choosing between top-loading and front-loading washing machines, there seems to be quite a bit of variation around the world. Here in Thailand, the top-loader is king; sure, you can get front-loaders (and we have) but you have to hunt around a bit for them. According to Wikipedia, the same is true of the US and Australia. In Europe, on the other hand, top-loaders are a rarity, except perhaps in launderettes. I don't know why - maybe people associate top-loaders with the old-fashioned twin-tubs (remember them?). The idea of having a box in your house to keep food cold in is an old one, of course. In ye olden days, it was called a cellar - if you were wealthy enough to have one. Then in the early nineteenth century in the US people had the idea of cutting up the ice off frozen lakes, storing it in warehouses and selling it bit by bit to households, who would keep their block of ice in a special cupboard designed to keep the cold air inside - an icebox. Deliveries of ice were as much a commonplace in American cities as deliveries of milk. (Hence, I suppose, the Eugene O'Neill play "The Iceman Cometh". "The Milkman Cometh" doesn't have quite the same ring somehow, does it?) Inevitably, commercial refrigeration facilities were available quite some time before the domestic version, and for several decades the commercial facilities would provide the ice for iceboxes. Perhaps inevitably it was a Frenchman, Marcel Audiffren, who had the idea of producing a refrigerator for the domestic market, thus enabling people to keep fresh food in short-term storage at home. But the earliest fridges using his design cost a whopping $1,000 back in 1911 - about twice the cost of the average car. And many of these units needed the compressor motor and heat diffuser to be housed in a different room from the cold compartment. It wasn't until 1927 that a mass-produced fridge became available. The General Electric "Monitor-Top" is a funny-looking thing by modern standards, with its compressor on top concealed by a decorative porcelain ring; but it sold over a million, and some are still working today. You maybe wouldn't have expected the dishwasher to be the oldest among the four inventions I asked about at the beginning of this piece. Yet they've been around in more or less their present form since 1886! The inventor, Josephine Cochrane, didn't invent it for herself as such, but for her servants - who were chipping her chinaware. The idea was that extra-hot water and more powerful, more caustic detergents would remove food more effectively than hand-washing, and avoid the almost inevitable bumps and bashes in washing-up basins. Needless to say, all of these innovations have been refined since their invention. The CFCs which first brought fridges into the home have now been banned internationally; washing machines use far less water now than they used to; some microwaves can now read the barcodes on food packaging and cook the contents automatically; and researchers at the University of New South Wales have been working on a dishwasher that uses "supercritical" carbon dioxide instead of water and detergent, saving energy and reducing pollution of the water cycle with harsh chemicals. And of course all of them are getting hooked up to the internet these days. What next, I wonder?
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Contributor's Note
This Intel is an extract from one of our opt-in email newsletters. In addition to the usual expat-related topics, each newsletter covers a subject of wider interest - something different each time.
http://www.britishexpat.com/lists/index.php?p=subscribe&id=1
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