Comforts of Home: The American House and the Evolution of Modern ConvenienceClarkson Potter, 1999 - 287 sider The Age of Technology is nowhere made more personal than at home. Modern convenience shapes our daily routine, making today's American house a place of comfort, the like of which has never been known. Yet of all aspects of modern technology, it is the evolution of what is in the household that has been least written about. InThe Comforts of Home, an unprecedented work written for a general audience with no particular knowledge of science or technology, social historian Merritt Ierley weaves in aspects of architecture, social history, and technology to present an underexplored but central feature of American cultural identity: how our lives are shaped by the domestic technology around us. Here we see a simple brick cubicle with a stove inside it evolve into central heating, a barrel with a large handle become the automatic washing machine, a box lined with charcoal birth the modern refrigerator, and the modern toilet develop from a rudimentary stone trough. The Comforts of Homecharts the evolution of mechanical systems--from central heating to lighting, from kitchen to bathroom, from washing machine to vacuum cleaner--on which we all depend and without which most of us could hardly imagine surviving. It is also the story of the people responsible for the revolution of convenience in the home: people like Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, a British Loyalist, inventor and spy who fled his home in the American colonies in 1776. His genius of invention returned in the form of inventions with practical impact on everyday life in the household. Or like architects Benjamin Latrobe and James Gallier, Jr., who defined the cutting edge of modern convenience for their times.The Comforts of Homeis also the story of ordinary people like David and Ida Eisenhower, who provided their son Dwight and his brothers with a home that increased in comfort the way most American homes did--bit by bit, appliance by appliance, advance by advance--as new technology became cheaper and more widespread, and more a part of everyday life. The story of the convenience of modern living is compellingly traced in this delightfully written book illustrated with nearly 200 photographs and vintage illustrations. Front and back illustrations, c. 1892, show a Standard Gas Machine apparatus that was used for supplying one's own home with illuminating gas in the age of gaslight (courtesy of Smithsonian Institution). Inset shows delivery of a 1960s automatic "Ice Maker" refrigerator (courtesy of Whirlpool Corporation). |
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1920s TO PRESENT air conditioning American homes apparatus appliances architect Argand lamp bathing bathroom bathtub Benjamin Benjamin Henry Latrobe Benjamin Latrobe Benjamin Thompson boiler Boston Bramah built candles Carrier Corporation catalog central heat cistern coal cold comfort and convenience COMFORTS OF HOME COMING OF MODERN Company cooking cool copper curator device early electric motor engine England fire fireplace floor Franklin Franklin stove fuel Gallier House gaslight Gauger heating system History hot water hot-air furnace household technology Hyde Hall icebox inches installed invention iron kitchen sink Latrobe London manufactured mechanical Museum nineteenth century oven Owens-Thomas House Pennsylvania percent PERFECTING OF COMFORT Philadelphia pipe plumbing privy pump range refrigerator reservoir roaster Rumford Silas Deane House siphon steam stove THUMB AND FINGER tion twentieth century U.S. Census Bureau U.S. Patent valve Waln warm washer washing machine water closet water supply windmill York