The Modern Electric Home Of The 1920s

[@Blaqjaqshellaq]

An ad for an electric vacuum cleaner had this line: "Don't kill your wife with work! Let electricity do it."

[@radicalross7700]

Electrocuting wives!?! How barbaric!

[@Blaqjaqshellaq]

@@radicalross7700 It wasn't actually intended that way...

[@radicalross7700]

​@@BlaqjaqshellaqI know. Perhaps I should have said "How shocking!" 😂 to make it clear that I was joking.

[@Mignon-n4b]

Hahaha!

[@backpocketuniverse]

I happened to watch this after struggling (and failing) for two mornings in a row to snake some new wires through the basement ceiling of my 1885 home. At one point, I realized that one of the old cloth wires in the basement was live and was shocking me!

[@janerkenbrack3373]

I wonder if electricity ever caught on.

[@SharonPadget]

🤣

[@steve2474]

It'll be a fad, just like talking movie pictures.

[@CraigFThompson]

LOL! LOL! LOL! LOL! LOL! LOL!! LOL!! LOL!! LOL!! LOL!!

[@danirizary6926]

I've never seen any

[@chuckstuart]

That bathroom looks like a medical examiner's dream.

[@2nostromo]

I'm only 70 and I clearly remember my mother using a roller washer. I was fascinated by the water oozing out of the cloths and she was terrified of it consuming me... and herself!

[@CraigFThompson]

I remember one of our neighbors (a family with a classmate of mine) had one of those old wringer washers; this classmate once put a kitchen knife thru the rollers, laughing hysterically when it was propelled at high speed....

[@smartyhall]

My modern, "smart washer" gives me enough trouble these days that I would just about kill for an old-fashioned mangle to get the water out!

[@2nostromo]

@@smartyhall Fair cop!

[@user-mv9tt4st9k]

Our home was built in 1913. I have often wondered when it was first wired for electricity (there are capped gas lines in almost every room, including the bathroom). The old bypassed knob and tube electrical is still here. Looking at those wonderful electrical appliances (that bathroom heater, oh my goodness), knowing that knob and tube wiring was the likely delivery system, made me scream inside. 😂😂

[@hjacobs8972]

A friend of mine said his grandfather was obsessed with the high cost of electricity. He would follow the grandmother around while she vacuumed, rushing her and unplugging the vacuum when she had to move objects. Probably saved 4 cents a week.

[@CraigFThompson]

Btw, these days, we have every right to be obsessed with the high cost of electrical energy; look at how several areas are forcing people to forfeit their fossil-fueled heating systems----this will definitely result in a much higher electric bill each and every month!

[@Welgeldiguniekalias]

@@CraigFThompson That's why you need a heat pump instead of resistive heaters. You've already got one except you think of it as an air conditioner.

[@davidbudka1298]

The problem was, many communities and rural districts did not have reliable central station service or it didn’t exist. Many power plants were small, and transmission lines were only beginning to be built. Private utilities struggled to amass capital and resorted to a method of merging smaller utilities in order to artificially increase their value. In many homes, they maybe had a 60-ampere service. My favorite story from the 1920s and 1930s was how Wilbur Foshay bought up small utilities and power plants across northern Nebraska, but did little to improve these properties or services. This prompted a more local response to built a competing utility. Foshay sold out to the Interstate Power Company, but it inherited all the ill-will the former created! Interstate made an effort to improve services, and eventually acquired the competing utility via the Iowa Public Service Company. However, it wasn’t until the Consumer’s Public Power District took over after 1940 that long distance 69,000-volt and 115,000-volt lines were built across northern Nebraska.

[@LFTRnow]

Electric power and appliances were just beginning to enter the home at this time (and electricity was expensive) but it is still rather amazing how well they did with their predictions. We all recognize and use modern versions of all of these items.

[@t-mar9275]

Unfortunately, electricity was still a luxury for many at the time. 42% of American homes still weren't wireded for eletricity in 1926 and the average price was very high, at 7 cents per kilowatt-hour. That may not seem like much but remember that the average common labourer was only making about 42 cents per hour and those early electrical products weren't very efficent, consuming a lot more power than what we have today. As a result, many of the homes that had eletricity were only using it for lighting. So, the article was very much about a "dream home", available only to the priviledged few.

[@Muonium1]

People should really go look up the graph "inflation adjusted US electricity prices". It's amazing. Residential cost per kW has basically been flat since the 60s, but used to be TEN TIMES what it is now in the 1920s and 1910s. As any new technology matures, its price tends to approach the cost of raw materials used to make it.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

​@@Muonium1 I wonder if a major source of the cost reduction was the employment of large petroleum burning earth-moving equipment replacing men and horse drawn bucket scrapers in extracting the coal for the power plant furnaces. And the initial steam parameters rose and almost doubled the thermal efficiency in that time.

[@CraigFThompson]

*Wired.

[@seed_drill7135]

Only one of my grandparents had it growing up. My dad’s grandmother, who died in 1947, never got it. My mother’s grandparents got a tiny bit from a personal hydroelectric damn my aunt and uncle set up across the street, but had carbide lighting until after the war. The jets are still in the walls. In fact they only got properly wired shortly before getting a TV.

[@CraigFThompson]

@@seed_drill7135 A hydroelectric "damn"?!

[@Muonium1]

At the time of this article's writing only half of US homes had electrical service, in the UK it was barely a third of homes. I think it's interesting that with the exceptions of the lights and the radio, it is notable that every single application of electricity illustrated in the drawing is either a motor, or a simple heating coil of some form or another. One hundred years later remarkably little has changed about that fact. The only significant new electrical devices in major use since then are TVs and computers, everything else is still a motor or a heater (an electric car is just a fancy computerized motor). The great utility of electricity comes from the fact that it is such a low entropy source of energy, it's very highly ordered and thus extremely versatile. It would be great to see what new uses the next hundred years will bring.

[@bennri]

software is the new thing.

[@JJONNYREPP]

The Modern Electric Home Of The 1920s 1848pm 22.9.24 what you need is jack parlance and friends to write up everything...

[@Muonium1]

@@JJONNYREPP wut

[@JJONNYREPP]

@@Muonium1 Comments on ‘The Modern Electric Home Of The 1920s’ 1900pm 22.9.24 i sed! my home is not as mod-con as the alleged techno- critic (sic) homestead of the 1920's!!! having to shout at the literary deaf is no mean feat... p.s the large senile greasy blob which seems to descend from the celling on to my computer when i'm trynna converse has resurfaced... no idea what the fook it is...or pertains to... i use bigger words like toothbrush and stethoscope, also...

[@technoman9000]

Ok

[@heard3879]

The immersion heater, is that for heating the running water? Because the fan blowing hot air in the bathroom should be ample for keeping the room warm. But then, there is an oil heater in the basement. So we shouldn’t need the fan blowing hot air in the bathroom. I’m a little confused about the purpose of the immersion heater.

[@KevinSmith-yh6tl]

That was Swell

[@RobertJarecki]

Some of the early toy trains had full 120 volt power at the tracks.

[@CraigFThompson]

Has anyone else noticed that the article clearly omitted the PHONE and the DOOR BELL?!

[@t-mar9275]

The telephone was omitted for a specific reason. A house does not have to be wired for electricity to have a working telephone. All the other products shown in the article require the house to be wired for electricity. The electricity to run the telephone is supplied via the telephone lines by the telephone company. Traditional land line telephones will still work during a black-out as the telephone companies typically have huge storage batteries to run the system and emergency back-up generators to supply the power in the event of extended power shortages.

[@CraigFThompson]

@@t-mar9275 And the doorbell?!

[@t-mar9275]

@@CraigFThompson The premise of the article is that "one irksome household task after another has been lightened or eliminated" by electrical products. The electric door bell doesn't lighten or eliminate a task for the member of the household. .

[@CraigFThompson]

@@t-mar9275 It at least allows people to be farther away from the door than they'd be without the doorbell.... Furthermore, almost simultaneously with the development of the doorbell came the electric door lock.

[@Welgeldiguniekalias]

@@CraigFThompson As the name suggests, that would have been a literal bell, activated by a rod or string that was linked to a knob next to the front door that you could pull. No power needed.

[@michaelmcgee8543]

The old article failed to mention the air conditioners they started in 1917 in the 20 s they were used in theaters air cooled.

[@timmmahhhh]

Though this was an article on homes. AC was pretty much limited to theaters and commercial buildings. I looked it up and the window unit was developed in 1931 and air conditioning wouldn't be common in houses until the '60s

[@CraigFThompson]

@@timmmahhhh Until then, however, it was swamp coolers....

[@JJONNYREPP]

The Modern Electric Home Of The 1920s. 22.9.24. A 1920 home more mod-con than my 2024 prison shell bungalow....

[@Ij-jan]

I did not think they had curling irons back then or handheld hairdryers. I think handheld hair dryers came out in the 60s.

[@jaysverrisson1536]

I have seen 1920s-30s era curling irons and hand-held hair dryers at antique shows and shops at one time or another, as well as most of the now-antique appliances depicted in the illustration. I used a a heavy 1920s brass and steel fan for years during the 1980s, until the bearings finally began to give up the ghost . . .

[@Ij-jan]

@@jaysverrisson1536 I stand corrected. The reason why I thought that was in the early 70s a friend of mine had a handheld hairdryer and I remember thinking how great it was and I have never seen one before. Thank you for letting me know.

[@RemusKingOfRome]

1926 Dish washer ? What's old is new again.

[@MemphiStig]

"Mark my words. Won't nothing good come from all this newfangled ee-lectricity. It's just gonna catch your house on fire and turn your grandchildren into softees. It ain't natural, I tell you. Goes against the laws of God." -- probably a letter to the editor in the next issue

[@am74343]

"It's the devvil'z toolez, I tellya! It's the schpirit of the DEE-monz! Usin' dat woo-hoo voo-doo sparking stuff makez ya git full o' sin and pestilence, dag nabbit!"

[@steveking4203]

Just think how much that all electric home would cost to power, especially in California

[@Pluviophile218]

Who would use that electric immersion heater?!!?

[@lamontcranston3177]

The new job of vacuuming automatically goes to the woman. No mention of energy consumption or expense. Soon people will have to join a gym to make up for all that work they are not doing. Fear not. You can use electric exercise machines.

[@CraigFThompson]

Disneyland once had an attraction entitled "Carousel of Tomorrow" in which a pedal-powered vacuum cleaner was featured.

[@kalevala29]

The latest trend in 1926? have all your appliances going at the same time using Electricity!

[@dave3657]

What next? Electric cars? 🤷🏻

[@RobertJarecki]

Electric cars were common in the 1920s, having been manufactured since before the First World War. They lost their popularity after the introduction of the electric starter,in addition to which they were slow and had limited range.

[@RandomRetr0]

100 years on and nothing has fundamentally changed except the advent of computers and smartphone

[@MarcoBailie]

New restrictive voting laws? All anybody is asking is for is valid ID. You have to have valid ID for most things. Why should voting be any different? I know what restrictive voting was all about in the South. I used to know people in Virginia that had never voted in their lives and weren't going to start now. They said that no one in their family had ever voted and there was no reason why they should have to do it. Now these people were white. But when they used to have poll tax in Virginia a lot of white people such as my friends couldn't afford to pay it. So I guess they just decided that voting wasn't for them. So the Voting Rights Act did more than enfranchise people of color. It enfranchised everyone. But it is a way different thing to say people should be able to vote without ID and if they can't do so this is oppression or racism. Do you really want people to vote that aren't US citizens?

[@retnavybrat]

What in the world does any of that have to do with this video?

[@MarcoBailie]

I was responding to a political ad that came up which I mistook for the website.