Simco Appliances, including a wooden icebox, at the Saskatoon Exhibition, ca. 1929. Photo Credit : Local History Room – Saskatoon Public Library - A 387
Family lore abounds with tales of getting other things caught in the wringer. The Wide World of Advertising Advertising for household devices has always been aimed squarely at women. A Macleans magazine ad from 1946 shows a smiling young mother, sharply dressed in skirt, apron and high-heels, surrounded by a host of General Electric appliances designed
to “make short work of housework” in the all-electric home. A 1956 article about “the new gadgets you’ll soon be seeing at the stores” listed remote controlled TVs for watching in the bathtub, a bedside panel to allow “sleepy housewives” to turn on the stove, fire up the toaster and let the dog out, and – our personal favourite – a portable radio with built-in Geiger counter. Popular Science magazine ran
a series of “dream kitchen” articles in the 1950s that show women swooning over motorized cabinets, pop-up blenders, a flour dispenser with powered sifter, sinks with retractable ovens and, for the man of the house, a kitchen that doubled as a darkroom. Because, why not? The Home of the Future People have been predicting the rise of the automatic
house since about the time good help started getting hard to find. Invariably, these prognostications seem hopelessly quaint when viewed from the lofty heights of the present-day. Because really, nothing says ‘World of Tomorrow’ quite like getting an email from your fridge or doing online banking on your microwave. As more aspects of daily life get wired into the everexpanding internet, however, this may actually be changing. But until the day someone invents a robot that can put out the dog and change the baby without ever getting the two mixed up, we humans will continue to be responsible for most of the jobs that need to be done in even the most modern of homes. Jeff O'Brien
SPRING
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