The Twenties. An era of Prohibition (and gangsters)…jazz…flappers…The Great Gatsby…and an accelerating stock market. I thought it might be fun to take a look at the state of technology as it stood a century ago, in 1925. This fourth post of the series is focused on domestic technologies and municipal infrastructure. (The first post focused on communications and entertainment, the second post on transportation, and the third post on calculating and information management systems.)
Illumination. For all of history until fairly recently, nightfall was a lot more significant than it has since become. Lighting was limited and expensive. (In one of the Hornblower novels, the protagonist stays up late in his hotel room and wonders how large the charge for ‘light’ will be on his hotel bill when he checks out.) Gas lighting (using gas made from coal) was introduced in the early 1800s and had significant advantages over torches, candles, whale-oil lamps, and similar solutions, but also had disadvantages: principally smell, soot, and heat. After Thomas Edison’s development of a practical light bulb and a system for power distribution, electric lighting gained popularity rapidly. In 1925, about 90-95% of urban homes were electrified…the proportion was much lower for rural homes, estimated as low as 10%.
Heating. Most homes relied on coal or wood-burning stoves or furnaces for heating. Central heating with coal-fired furnaces was common in urban middle-class homes, distributing heat via radiators or hot air ducts. In rural areas or older homes, fireplaces or wood stoves remained prevalent. Gas and oil heating were starting to appear in wealthier urban homes but were less common.
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.
– by Chris Fair (via 
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