The Comforts of Home: The American House and the Evolution of Modern Convenience

Rating:
Summary: A highly browsable, NEAT book.
Review: COMFORTS OF HOME is an awesome book that tells (in beautiful pictures as well as words) the story behind all the household conveniences we have grown accustomed to. After spotting this title in the architecture section of my local independant bookstore, I knew I would be leafing thru it for the next several minutes--I love a good illustrated history or technical book. What I didn't know is that just browsing this really interesting volume would lead me to purchase the book. And not just one copy, either. I ordered several copies on the internet for a number of my friends that I know will appreciate the old pictures and the story behind toilets, kitchens, microwaves, etc.

Good job, Merritt Ierley!

Rating:
Summary: Highly interesting popular history.
Review: The author makes horizontal sections in time recounting then current household technology. He covers heating, lighting, waste removal, plumbing, and major appliances.
Having grown up in a house built in the twenties and several times modified I am quite familiar with the use of anthracite coal for heating, and regular refuse removal including clinkers from the furnace. I hauled many a ton of coal, basket by basket, to stoke the fire and dragged out many an ash can full as a young lad.
On the other hand my father grew up in a house heated only by the kitchen range and a Franklin stove in the parlor. He was born in 1901.
Later we converted to gas and then moved to a house built in 1878 which also had been upgraded to have showers and gas heat. Up until the forties and fifties we had enormous hot air furnaces which depended on natural convection to distribute heat. Post WW II with the use of forced air heating the size of furnaces shrank to the size of a small wardrobe, instead of taking up half the basement.
This work is not much of a technical history but covers enough to carry the story, tracing from the inventions of the 1700s on. By the 1920s the major equipment of the modern home was all developed but was still to be refined and made automatic with thermostats and regulators. And the general use of central built-in air conditioning was not until the late 1950s. Only a few public buildings had chilled air and most of those were movie palaces and theatres which could not be left open to the natural environment.