Test Your Knowledge On The Comforts Of Home
Two centuries ago, Philadelphia resident Elizabeth Drinker noted in her diary the arrival of a new invention she called a shower bath.
Installed outdoors, it worked like this: The bather — typically a woman wearing a thin gown and “an Oyl cloath cap” — pulled a cord, releasing water that fell on her “through a cullender.”
“I bore it better than expected,” Drinker reported, “not having been wett all over att once, for twenty-eight years past.”
Social historian Merritt Ierley’s new book, “The Comforts of Home: The American House and the Evolution of Modern Convenience” (Potter, $30), is laced with similarly revealing passages, together with a thorough examination of how we got from privies and candlelight to PCs and cordless phones.
Today, most of America’s 160 million homes are relatively comfortable. Ninety-nine percent have heat; 98 percent have a kitchen stove, a refrigerator and at least one complete bathroom; 74 percent have air conditioning in one or more rooms.
Most of us take sinks, toilets and other conveniences for granted. But, as Ierley points out, it wasn’t so long ago when things like indoor plumbing were either unavailable or too expensive in many parts of the country. For perspective, test your knowledge of household innovations:
1.) True or false: When Thomas Jefferson moved into the White House in 1801, there were two bathrooms - one for women, one for men.
2.) Today’s “powder room” gets its name from the area in well-to-do homes where early water closets were installed. What was the original purpose of that space?
3.) Portable 19th-century bath tubs were most often used in which room? Why there?
4.) The world’s first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859. Why was that good news for whales?
5.) Through most of the 19th century, the typical American diet consisted of smoked, dried, salted, fermented, pickled and spiced foods. What invention changed that?
6.) Future President Dwight Eisenhower’s home in Abilene, Kan., was wired for electricity in 1904. What other convenience did the family get four years later?
7.) What was the first year that refrigerators outsold iceboxes in America?
8.) In the mid-1930s, what percentage of American homes still were without electricity?
9.) Forty years ago, what percentage of U.S. homes still lacked a full bathroom (sink, toilet and tub or shower)?
10.) Tappan introduced the first home microwave oven in 1955. Guess the price.
Answers: 1.) False. There was one privy out back. 2.) Powdering wigs. 3.) In the kitchen, because bath water was heated on the hearth. 4.) It allowed a shift from whale oil to kerosene as the favorite fuel for household lamps. 5.) The icebox. 6.) Indoor plumbing. 7.) 1930. 8.) One-third. 9.) 36 percent. 10.) $1,200.