The expression “industrial innovation” conjures up images of 3D printing or robots working on a factory assembly line. But while most people take washers and refrigerators for granted today, a century ago, these machines revolutionized people’s everyday lives.
The introduction of running water and electricity paved the way for radical social and cultural changes by making possible labor-saving devices to tackle routine household chores. Home appliances have eliminated the need to cook over a fireplace or charcoal stove or dedicate a full day each week to cleaning clothes. Such machines in particular gave women more time for activities outside the home – from paid work to higher education to leisure activities. In so doing, they have helped strengthen a growing middle class.
Here’s how six revolutionary household inventions came to life.
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The refrigerator: stay alive; Cool your food
At the beginning of the 20e century, food poisoning was on the increase in the United States. Food was traveling more and more from farms to stores and homes, and more was contaminated, causing everything from botulism to typhoid. Throughout the 19e century, reducing food spoilage involved harvesting and storing blocks of ice that were used in everything from shipping containers to domestic “coolers”. But ice consumption had reached unsustainable levels and the sources of this ice were increasingly polluted by industry.
Engineers found ways to use compressed gases as artificial refrigerants on a commercial scale, but it was Alfred Mellowes in Fort Wayne, Indiana who designed the first compact refrigerator in 1915 for home use. William Durant, then chairman of General Motors, bought the fledgling company, which was struggling to keep up with orders. His team refined the design and began assembling the new Frigidaire on an assembly line in Detroit.
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The dishwasher: no more chipped tea cups
Demonstration of an old dishwasher c. 1921
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Tired of spending hours hand washing her family’s fine china after dinner, Joséphine Cochrane invented the first commercially successful dishwasher. “If no one else is going to make it up, I’ll do it myself,” the recent widow resolved. She received her first patent for her device – which relied on water pressure rather than scrubbers – in 1886, after using her initials rather than her full name on demand to disguise her gender. Cochrane turned to mechanic George Butters to help him build a prototype in a shed attached to his family home in Shelbyville, Illinois. In 1893, the Garis-Cochrane dishwasher won an award at the World’s Fair in Chicago, with judges praising it for “the best mechanical construction, durability and suitability to its line of work.” By 1898, Cochrane had opened its own factory; with models costing over $ 300, most clients were hotels and restaurants.
In the 1920s, advertisements described appliances as “the electric dishwasher for fine homes” which would allow wealthy households “to keep the best class of servants”. But the price kept them out of the reach of most American families until after World War II.
WATCH: 101 Inventions That Changed the World on HISTORY Vault
The washing machine: killing the “washing day”
At the dawn of the 20e century, most women could expect to spend an entire day washing (and drying) their family’s clothes by hand, using large pots of boiling water and a scouring board. A lucky woman might own a wringer, operated with a crank, to remove excess water before hanging clothes on a line to dry. But getting through a full load usually involved hours of hard work.
Then came Frederick Maytag, a partner in a farm equipment business. In 1907 he was looking for new products to sell that would help the company weather the great cyclical fluctuations in agriculture. Maytag designed a hand crank washing machine, designed to lighten the burden on farm women. By 1911 he had found a way to use electricity or gasoline to power the new invention. The “Gyrofoam”, the first washing machine to use an agitator to clean clothes in an aluminum tub, made its debut in 1922. The modern clothes dryer (an appliance powered by electricity rather than a washing device). ventilation which relied on open fires to dry clothes) arrived shortly thereafter.
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The vacuum cleaner: the pillowcase solution
Brooms and carpet beaters just didn’t do the job. “The buildup of dust and dirt in residential homes is a source of great inconvenience to all good housekeepers,” Ives McGaffey wrote in his 1869 patent application for a carpet sweeper that leaned on a manual crank to create suction. The new generation vacuum cleaners were designed to run on gasoline and were so large that many were pulled into the streets by horse-drawn carriages; one called “Puffing Billy” even cleaned Westminster Abbey before Edward VII’s coronation in 1911. The modern vacuum cleaner, which used electric suction, was designed by Ohio Department Store janitor James Murray Spangler, who turned to regular household items. (using a pillowcase as the first vacuum bag) to design an efficient machine. When Spangler’s cousin and her husband, Susan and William Hoover, purchased the patent from the cash-strapped inventor in 1908, a brand of home appliances was born.
READ MORE: How Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse Fought to Electrify America
The electric iron: goodbye, burn marks
Undated advertisement with vignettes depicting the modern, electric way of housekeeping.
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The arduous chore of heating and reheating heavy irons on a stovetop or over a fire to smooth wrinkled clothes could take even longer than washing them. No wonder, then, that myriads of inventors scrambled to devise a more efficient – and less sweaty – way to use electricity. Henry W. Seely of New York filed the first patent for an electric iron in 1882; in a decade, new innovations have allowed users to control the heat level and largely eliminate unsightly scorch marks. Black seamstress and inventor Sarah Boone found a way to make the new invention even more practical, by designing the prototype of today’s ironing board and becoming, in 1892, one of the first black women to achieve a patent.
The electric mixer: easy to beat eggs
Anyone who has tried kneading bread or beating egg whites by hand knows how taxing these tasks can be and how much time and effort can be saved by using an electric mixer. No wonder, then, that myriads of inventive minds have set out to find some sort of solution to this chore that began nearly two centuries ago. Manual egg beaters could speed up the process of, say, mixing sugar, milk, and egg white to create a frosting for a cake, and black inventor Willie Johnson took it a step further in 1884 when he designed a device powered by an arrangement of gears. , pulleys and beaters. Home electrification made Rufus M. Eastman’s pioneering electric mixer possible. At the beginning of the 20e century, the stand mixer had become one of the most popular domestic innovations; the wives of KitchenAid executives tested their husbands’ appliances in their own homes and got excited about them. In the 1930s, movie star Ginger Rogers was spotted lining up to get one of the must-have gadgets.
