The electric stove is just one of a host of household appliances based on resistance heating—the production of heat energy as current passes through an electrically resistant material. Others that appeared in the early days of electrification (especially after Albert Marsh developed the nickel-chrome resistor) included toasters, hot plates, coffee percolators, and—most welcome of all—the electric iron. The idea of a self-heated iron wasn't new; versions that burned gas, alcohol, or even gasoline were available, but for obvious reasons they were regarded warily. The usual implement for the job was a flatiron, an arm-straining mass of metal that weighed up to 15 pounds; flatirons were used several at a time, heated one after the other on the top of a stove. An electric iron, by contrast, weighed only about 3 pounds, and the ironing didn't have to be done in the vicinity of a hot stove. In short order it displaced the flatiron and became the best selling of all electric appliances. Its popularity rose still further with the introduction of an iron with thermostatic heat control in 1927 and the appearance of household steam irons a decade later. Another hit was the electric toaster. The first successful version, brought out by General Electric in 1909, had no working parts, no controls, no sensors, not even an exterior casing. It consisted of a cage-like contraption with a single heating element. A slice of bread had to be turned by hand to toast both sides, and close attention was required to prevent burning. Better models soon followed—some with sliding drawers, some with mechanical ways of turning the bread—but the real breakthrough was the automatic pop-up toaster, conceived by a master mechanic named Charles Strite in 1919. It incorporated a timer that shut off the heating element and released a popup spring when the single slice of toast was done. After much tinkering, Strite's invention reached the consumer market in 1926, and half a million were sold within a few years. Advertisements promised that it would deliver "perfect toast every time—without watching, without turning, without burning," but that wasn't necessarily the case. When more than one slice was desired, the timer didn't allow for heat retention by the toaster, producing distinctly darker results with the second piece. The manufacturer recommended allowing time between slices for cooling—not what people breakfasting in a hurry wanted to hear. Happily, toasters were soon endowed with temperature sensors that determined doneness automatically.
Electricity revolutionized appliances in another way, powering small motors that could perform work formerly done by muscles. The first such household device, appearing in 1891, was a rotary fan made by the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company; its blades were driven by a motor developed chiefly by Nikola Tesla, a Serbian genius who pioneered the use of alternating current. The second was a vacuum cleaner, patented by a British civil engineer named H. Cecil Booth in 1901. He hit on his idea after observing railroad seats being cleaned by a device that blew compressed air at the fabric to force out dust. Sucking at the fabric would be better, he decided, and he designed a motor-driven reciprocating pump to do the job. Soon the power of the electric motor was applied to washing machines, sewing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers, can openers, coffee grinders, egg beaters, hair dryers, knife sharpeners, and many other devices. Electricity revolutionized appliances in another way, powering small motors that could perform work formerly done by muscles. The first such household device, appearing in 1891, was a rotary fan made by the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company; its blades were driven by a motor developed chiefly by Nikola Tesla, a Serbian genius who pioneered the use of alternating current. The second was a vacuum cleaner, patented by a British civil engineer named H. Cecil Booth in 1901. He hit on his idea after observing railroad seats being cleaned by a device that blew compressed air at the fabric to force out dust. Sucking at the fabric would be better, he decided, and he designed a motor-driven reciprocating pump to do the job. Soon the power of the electric motor was applied to washing machines, sewing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers, can openers, coffee grinders, egg beaters, hair dryers, knife sharpeners, and many other devices. At the turn of the century, only about one American family in 15 employed servants, but having such a source of muscle power was devoutly craved by many and was seen as a key indicator of status. As housework was eased by electric motors and the number of servants dropped, such views changed, but some advertising copywriters insisted on describing appliances in social terms: "Electric servants can be depended on—to do the muscle part of the washing, ironing, cleaning and sewing," said a General Electric advertisement in 1917; "Don't go to the Employment Bureau. Go to your Lighting Company or leading Electric Shop to solve your servant problem." The electric servant brigade was rapidly improved. In 1907 an American inventor named James Murray Spangler created a vacuum cleaner that basically consisted of an old-fashioned carpet sweeper to raise dust and a vertical shaft electric motor to power a fan and blow the dust into an external bag. Manufactured by the Hoover Company, which bought the patent in 1908, it was hugely successful, especially after Hoover in 1926 extended the fan motor's power to a rotating brush that "beats as it sweeps as it cleans." Meanwhile, the Electrolux company in Sweden grabbed a sizable share of the market with a very different design for a vacuum cleaner—a small rolling cylinder that had a long hose and a variety of nozzles to clean furniture and curtains as well as carpets.
No aspect of housework stood in greater need of motor power than washing clothes, a job so slow and grueling when performed manually that laundresses were by far the most sought-after domestic help. In the preelectric era, Mondays were traditionally devoted to doing the laundry. First, the clothes were rubbed against a washboard in soapy water to remove most of the dirt; next they were wrung out, perhaps by running them through a pair of hand-cranked rollers; they were then boiled briefly in a vat on top of the stove; then, after removal with a stick, they were soaped, rinsed, and wrung out again; finally they were hung on a line to dry—unless it was raining. The arrival of electricity prompted many efforts to mechanize parts of this ordeal. Some early electric washing machines worked by rocking a tub back and forth; others pounded the clothes in a tub with a plunger; still others rubbed them against a washboard. A big improvement came in 1922 when Howard Snyder of the Maytag Company designed a tub with an underwater agitator whose blade forced water through the clothes to get the dirt out.
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