Retrotech 1925: Domestic Technologies and Municipal Infrastructure

The idea of the thermostat goes back to when the Dutch inventor Cornelius Drebbel (the creator of the first submarine in history) invented an oven to incubate eggs, whose temperature was controlled by a mercury thermostat and an air intake that allowed larger or smaller quantities of hot air to pass through. A thermostat that could regulate the output of coal furnaces was developed by Albert Butz and Mark Honeywell between 1883 and 1906: these devices operated by opening and closing the damper to regulate the rate of combustion. They still seem to have been fairly rare in home heating systems in 1925, so maintaining a comfortable temperature must have taken frequent adjustment, in addition to occasional coal-shoveling.

Cooking.  Cooking was usually done on stovetops or in ovens, with cast-iron cookware common. Open-hearth cooking was nearly obsolete but persisted in some rural homes.  Something like 5-10% of homes used gas for cooking (this was usually “town gas”, i.e., gas made from coal, rather than natural gas)..they greatly reduced the labor required for cooking with a coal or wood stove–the phrase gas-stove wife reflected the additional leisure that the owner of such an appliance might expect to have.  There’s an interesting article here about the social and culinary impact of easier cooking.

Electric stoves had been commercially introduced circa 1900, but in 1925 they were still pretty rare. These stoves were expensive, costing $100–$300 compared to gas stoves ($50–$100) or coal/wood stoves ($20–$50). (Multiply by 16 for equivalents in today’s money.) Moreover, they required higher-capacity electric service than was required for lighting.

Refrigeration. The most common method for keeping food cold was still the icebox.  Regular ice deliveries were required, and there was an industry providing this service. About 80% of homes used iceboxes in 1925.  Electric refrigerators were available but they were expensive–about $500, equivalent to $8000 today.  Gas refrigerators–which had no moving parts–had been invented but were not yet commercially available at any scale. Ammonia was commonly used as the refrigerant; this resulted in several tragedies, one of which motivated Albert Einstein and his then-student Leo Szilard to invent an improved refrigerator which used an electromagnetic pump. Their invention never made it to commercialization, though.

The electric clothes washing machine was first introduced in 1908, but by the mid-1920s they were still only in about 5% of homes. And for farm families like those Owen Young spoke about, there was likely to be no electricity available..some people hooked up washing machines to small gas engines, but these were probably fairly uncommon. So circa 1932, when Young spoke with his biographer, the wash-day situation on most farms would have been still pretty much the way he remembered from his boyhood.

 

Cleaning.  Vacuum cleaners had been introduced in the early 1900s, but in 1925 they were still pretty rare, only about 10-15% of households had them. They were pretty expensive: $25-$75, equivalent to $400-1200 today.

Water. About 70% of US homes had indoor plumbing in 1925…much lower numbers for rural than for urban homes, of course.  Even among those urban homes that did have plumbing, though, only 30-40% had hot water. Prior to the introduction of water chlorination, tap water could be a dangerous vector of disease, resulting in urban disease and mortality rates that were significantly higher than those in rural areas–by 1925, 80-90% of urban water supplies were chlorinated.

Sewing Machines.  Research for this post led me to an interesting article about a budget for a couple in 1925.  Under clothing expense, the article says that this cost item will be greatly influenced by the wife’s sewing skills or lack thereof. Which led me to wonder how much a sewing machine would cost in 1925.  The foot-powered models ran $25-50 and the electric versions were $60-100.

Municipal Infrastructure.  Domestic technology was often supported by municipal infrastructure, some government-owned and some private:  mainly electricity generating plants, gasworks, ice plants, waterworks, and sewage treatment plants.  Electricity in 1925 was expensive by our current standards: 6-8 cents per kwh, which is $.96-$1.28/kwh in our present money. (More in small towns and the relatively rare electrified rural areas.) This was still a lot cheaper than the $6.60-$9.90 equivalent in 1900.

These costs had been driven down by larger plants and higher efficiencies..Edison’s Pearl Street plant, first operational in 1882, generated 720 kilowatts, with a boiler pressure of 125 psi, while by 1925, plants with capacities of 150+ megawatts and boiler pressures of over 500 psi were being built. These larger plants and higher efficiencies drove down costs. About 60% of the nation’s electricity came from coal-fired plants, with the balance being hydroelectric: the great era of dam-building still lay ahead.

Water distribution systems have existed for centuries, famously including the Roman aqueducts going back to about 300 BC and Persian and Mesopotamian systems going back even further. The first US waterworks was built in Boston in 1652, with major projects in Philadelphia and New York City dating from 1804 and 1852 respectively. These systems did not necessarily represent an improvement from the standpoint of public health, though: they could and did spread diseases such as cholera. Long-distance piping from relatively clean sources could help reduce the risk, as could filtration: the introduction of water chlorination, first accomplished in New Jersey in 1908, was a major step forward.

Icemaking plants were an essential component of municipal infrastructure. The shipping of natural ice to warm climates had been conducted on a large scale beginning in 1806, organized by the entrepreneur Frederic Tudor, known as the Ice King. Mechanical icemaking on a large scale became feasible in the late 1800s. In 1904, 10 million tons of ice were made mechanically in the US, with 5 million tons of natural ice still being distributed. By 1925, mechanical ice output had reached 35 million tons, with the industry in transition from steam-powered plants to electrical power.

(Research assistance from Grok acknowledged.)

Here’s an interesting feed at X:  1925 Live, featuring newspaper stories from 100 years ago.

I haven’t yet decided what the next post in this Technology 1925 series should be: candidate topics are manufacturing, medicine, and agriculture.