Kitchen - Edison and Electricity
Imagine working 18 hours a day by candlelight in this room. A cook's eyes would be ruined by the time she was 30 years old, meaning she could no longer work. But with electric lights, the cook here could work well into her thirties or later if she wanted to. These lights were not only essential for the cook to do her job, they were, in a very real sense, job security for her and food security for her family. The impact of electric lighting was profound.
However, the impact on society was much broader than that.
Until the dawn of electricity, only the rich had a means to save labor... their servants. This changed dramatically when electricity became widespread and devices like this early toaster were invented.
Notice that it had to be plugged into a light (though plugging it in over the sink might not be the best idea). There were no outlets when this house was built as they had not been invented yet. The only electricity was for lighting so adaptors and other methods had to be used.
In fact, it was not until 1904 that Harvey Hubbell, who also invented the pull chain light socket in 1896, patented the electric plug we use today. His plug replaced a variety of round pin approaches that started making their way to the market in the Eighteen Eighties. The standard plug revolutionized the way electrical appliances were connected or disconnected from a power supply. Before the outlet, post terminals would extend out from a wall and every electrical device had to be hardwired to the house. The new approach offered interchangeability.
This toaster, and other electrical appliances like it, were truly revolutionary: They literally turned the social structure upside down. This is because toasters, and other new “labor saving devices” like coffee pots and vaccuum cleaners, gave middle class women something they had never had before... “free time!” All of a sudden middle class women could live almost as well as upper class women who had servants.
This created vast changes in the social structure and had one monumental impact... Toasters, and the like, led to women getting the vote. Here's how: When middle class women were no longer tied to house work and kitchen work all day, they had time to read, to do charity work, or to work on causes like suffrage. Electricity helped change women’s suffrage from a movement of rich women (imagine five women lobbying at the court house) to a mass movement of middle class women (now there were five hundred women lobbying for the cause). With the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment in 2020, it is important to remember the sacrifice and hard work of suffragettes and the small but important role that electricity played in the process of women claiming and taking their rights.
Thomas Edison saw the liberating potential of electricity. He began inventing and producing “Hotpoint” appliances so that women would be, in his words, “domestic engineers” who directed work, not engaged in it. A massive change in society resulted.
Electricity was truly revolutionary.
