This book delves into the early days of electrical appliance development when many novel and little known appliances were made. The manufacture and operation of some of these inventions encountered seemingly insurmountable problems at the time - the first toaster, for example, would often shoot the toast high into the air, and the toast was occasionally on fire - but many are now revived in some of the latest appliances we use today. This is an ideal one-stop informative book which looks at every aspect of early electrical appliances, from the Harness electropathic corset and head-ache curing electric hairbrush of the Victorian fashion world to the tea parties at which guests watched vacuum-cleaning displays.

The transformative effect of technological change on households and culture, seen from a macroeconomic perspective through simple economic models. In Evolving Households, Jeremy Greenwood argues that technological progress has had as significant an effect on households as it had on industry. Taking a macroeconomic perspective, Greenwood develops simple economic models to study such phenomena as the rise in married female labor force participation, changes in fertility rates, the decline in marriage, and increased longevity. These trends represent a dramatic transformation in everyday life, and they were made possible by advancements in technology. Greenwood also addresses how technological progress can cause social change. Greenwood shows, for example, how electricity and labor-saving appliances freed women from full-time household drudgery and enabled them to enter the labor market. He explains that fertility dropped when higher wages increased the opportunity cost of having children; he attributes the post–World War II baby boom to a combination of labor-saving household technology and advances in obstetrics and pediatrics. Marriage rates declined when single households became more economically feasible; people could be more discriminating in their choice of a mate. Technological progress also affects social and cultural norms. Innovation in contraception ushered in a sexual revolution. Labor-saving technological progress at home, together with mechanization in industry that led to an increase in the value of brain relative to brawn for jobs, fostered the advancement of women's rights in the workplace. Finally, Greenwood attributes increased longevity to advances in medical technology and rising living standards, and he examines healthcare spending, the development of new drugs, and the growing portion of life now spent in retirement.

A socio-cultural study of the history of electricity during the late Victorian and Edward periods. It shows how technology, authority and gender interacted in pre-World War I Britain.

Before 1930, the domestic market for electrical appliances was segmented, but New Deal policies and programs created a true mass market, reshaping the electrical and housing markets and guiding them toward mandated social goals. The New Deal identified electrical refrigeration as a key technology to reform domestic labor, raise family health, and build family assets. New Deal incentives led to nearly fifty percent of Title I National Housing Act loans being used to buy electric refrigerators in the 1930s. New Deal policies ultimately created the mass commodity culture of home-owning families that typified the conservative 1950s. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.

Winner of the 2023 Emily Toth Award for Best Single Work in Women's Studies “All-Electric” Narratives is the first in-depth study of time-saving electrical appliances in American literature. It examines the literary depiction of refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, oven ranges, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, toasters, blenders, standing and hand-held mixers, and microwave ovens between 1945, when the “all-electric” home came to be associated with the nation's hard-won victory, and 2020, as contemporary writers consider the enduring material and spiritual effects of these objects in the 21st century. The appropriation and subversion of the rhetoric of domestic electrification and time-saving comprises a crucial, but overlooked, element in 20th-century literary forms and genres including Beat literature, Black American literature, second-wave feminist fiction, science fiction, and postmodernist fiction. Through close-readings of dozens of literary texts alongside print and television ads from this period, Dini shows how U.S. writers have unearthed the paradoxes inherent to claims of appliances' capacity to “give back” time to their user, transport them into a technologically-progressive future, or “return” them to some pastoral past. In so doing, she reveals literary appliances' role in raising questions about gender norms and sexuality, racial exclusion and erasure, class anxieties, the ramifications of mechanization, the perils and possibilities of conformity, the limitations of patriotism, and the inevitable fallacy of utopian thinking-while both shaping and radically disrupting the literary forms in which they operated.

'Full of historical anecdotes . . . but this is much more than a history book. [George Dyson] weaves his threads together for a purpose. Using voices of the past and present, he describes a fresh and sometimes startling viewpoint of the emerging relationship between nature and machines. From vignettes about Olaf Stapledon, George Boole, John von Neumann, and Samuel Butler, a larger story develops in which the twin processes of intelligence and evolution are inseparably intertwined' Danny Hillis, Wired

Finally. A comprehensive collector's book and historical reference containing everything there is to know about antique and vintage electric waffle irons and the companies that made them. The author, a former science teacher, precision scientific instrument maker, and writer, has for years collected, researched, restored, and in some cases written about everything from antique pocket watches and cameras to old radios and vintage automobiles. Bill's passion for antique electric appliances has led to this first-of-its-kind book. The author's collection of waffle makers, all meticulously restored to like-new condition, numbers in the hundreds. In this book he shares with the reader everything he's learned over the years about these little marvels and the companies and people that created them. This 258 page book is profusely illustrated with never-before-published materials about waffles and waffle irons including patent drawings, historic paintings, factory-issued literature, and vintage photos and advertisements. Also included are hundreds of informative photos of restored waffle irons from the author's personal collection along with rare and unusual examples from the collections of noted toaster and appliance aficionados from around the country. This is no ordinary collector-type picture book. It's the culmination of hundreds of hours of research into the history of the electric appliance industry in 20th century America. Through exclusive interviews with the heirs of company founders, with former employees, and with archivists, historians, and librarians, the author has been able to compile in-depth histories of over 85 appliance manufacturers and retailers. For the first time the reader will find detailed biographies of many of the men who founded and ran the companies that gave the world the toasters, the ovens, the grills, and the other kitchen appliances that today we all take for granted.