Electric house of the future: 1939's promise
Popular Mechanics' August, 1939 feature "The Electric Home of the Future" features the kind of boundless, electrical future hovering on the horizon for the brave people of 1939.
Link
In the not-distant future, the home may well be equipped with “mood control,” which is made possible by newly developed light sources. It’s possible that people will suit the light and color of their rooms to their moods. These new-type lamps produce colors of warm white, daylight white, gold, red, blue, pink and green. It’s up to the psychologists to figure out the proper combinations of colors to lift one’s spirits, when they are down, with a flood of brilliant light, or subdue a sense of excitement with soothing mellow light.These new lamps are highly efficient colored-light makers, producing from ten to fifty times as much light per watt as has been possible with incandescent lamps. They utilize a very low-pressure mercury vapor discharge which produces ultraviolet radiations, giving little direct visible light or heat radiation. The inside surface of the glass tubes is coated with chemicals which glow when struck by invisible ultraviolet radiation. The combination of chemicals used in the coating of the lamp determines the resultant color.
It is even possible that in the future we may produce on a commercial scale similar lights by bombarding the fluorescent material of the lamps with short-wave radio beams.
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I wrote about this topic in my MSc dissertation (2003). You can see it here: www.astrology.lu/e-home
"subdue a sense of excitement" priceless. Thank god I don't live in that future.
And, of course, in the future, women will wear pencil skirts just like those in the late 30s ...
If you follow the link to Modern Mechanix, on the first page there is a picture of a guy heating a ham sandwich in a prototype microwave. The "oven" consists of two of the biggest, scariest looking electrodes this side of Frankenstein's lab. Hilarious.
For what it's worth, this presents a fairly accurate vision of our era. No flying cars or Jetsons-style robots: just refrigeration, air conditioning, microwave ovens, television, dishwashers, and fluorescent lighting. The aesthetics of these devices are different from what was envisioned, but in substance it's pretty much right on target.
I'm impressed that they got the idea of microwave ovens; the first consumer-level unit was 30 years away at the time.
For what it's worth, this presents a fairly accurate vision of our era. No flying cars or Jetsons-style robots: just refrigeration, air conditioning, microwave ovens, television, dishwashers, and fluorescent lighting. The aesthetics of these devices are different from what was envisioned, but in substance it's pretty much right on target.
I'm impressed that they got the idea of microwave ovens; the first consumer-level unit was 30 years away at the time.
There's much that is innovative about that house, but looking at the illustration, I notice many, many problems, mostly in the kitchen.
* The refrigerator is too small, and an ergonomic nightmare -- getting food out requires bending way over.
* The sink is on the wrong side of the peninsula.
* Why are the oven and the range not aligned? I guess they don't have to be, being electric and all, but still. Plus, the oven is too far out of the kitchen.
* Also, good luck finding pans that'll fit in that curved oven.
* The range cover frankly baffles me. Presumably, it folds up like that to prevent food from spilling onto the range? But...
-- in order for that to be effective, it would work better to have it fold out on both sides, like a double door.
-- it looks precarious, raising the worry that it'll swing down and on top of a cooking meal.
-- why is a range cover even necessary? An electric range has no pilot light.
* Is that stool so that you can use the peninsula like a breakfast bar? If so, the sink will get in the way.
Getting away from the kitchen:
* You'll never get furniture to fit in that curved living area. The illustrator seems to have noticed this, and populated it with children playing on the floor. (It looks bigger on the floorplan than it does in the drawing -- the perspective is problematic. This may not actually be an issue.)
* I believe that piece of furniture by the entrance is a radio? No one's going to be able to hear it -- it's facing the wrong way for the living area, and it's too far from the kitchen and dining areas. This problem is far worse in the floorplan.
This has been pointless crankery minute.
Here's a 1950's all-electric showcase home that is now open to the public:
http://www.jocomuseum.org/electrichouse.htm
The kitchen looks pretty cool.
Tritium, I suspect the range cover is to turn the range into a possible eating or food-prep surface when it's not in use. That might make the breakfast bar concept more plausible.
Still, you're right, the whole thing has terrible ergonomics.
Our homes are equipped with mood control. Only, it's a pill, not a light.