Living then.. living now

Post Reply New Topic

Picture a house in the 1920's. Aside from the usual furniture, what did it have?
- 1 light switch in each room
- 1 power point in the living room, to plug in a radio
- 1 power point in the kitchen for the refrigerator
- 2 porch lights - 1 at front, 1 at back
- 1 car
- a single car garage, unlit
- nothing 'on charge' anywhere

Picture a house in the present. Aside from the usual furniture, what does it have?
- multiple light switches in many rooms
- 10 lamps - bedside, living rooms, sconces etc
- 2 power points in each bedroom
- 2 living areas, each with 8 power points
- 16 power boards
- 6 TV sets
- 4 stereo systems
- 2 DVD/Blue-ray players
- 1 PVR player
- 1 cable TV box
- 1 VHS player - not used, and haven't bothered to correct the time display
- 1 record player - also disused
- 1 surround sound system
- 1 surround sound base box
- 8 power points in the kitchen - fridge, freezer, blender, microwave, coffee-maker, phone chargers, electric waffle iron, juicer, toaster etc
- 4 power points in the laundry - washer, dryer, iron and (omg) a spare
- 2 bathrooms with 2 power points each - electric tooth brush, hairdryer, hair straightener, electric shaver, radio
- 2 night glow lights for hallways
- 5 wired in appliances - cooler/aircon, spa-bath, fan heater, burgular alarm, door bell
- 2 car garage
- 6 garage lights
- 4 power points in the garage
- 2 electric garage doors
- 3 cars
- 2 automated watering systems
- 10 outside lights
- 3 outside sensor lights
- 1 pool pump
- 6 things on charge somewhere in the house - phones, torches, camera, iPad etc
- 1 desktop computer
- 1 desktop screen
- 3 laptop computers
- 1 printer
- 1 modem
- 1 wireless router
- 1 cordless phone base
- 2nd cordless phone charging base
- 1 beer fridge
- 1 novelty neon bar light
- 4 electric blankets
- seasonal lighting - Christmas etc

No wonder both adults need to work

Most of those now are likely cheaper than the radio was back then...

EDIT: I'd also like to know just who exactly has six TV's and four stereo sets. We're obviously not talking about an average middle-class family here.

Possibly not average, but several low-to-middle middle class families that I know of do have. 2 TV's, 1 in each living room (oh.. and I forgot to add the XBox and Playstation), 1 TV in the kitchen, and 1 TV in each bedroom.

Our household had five sets at one point in early '14. One four inch screen tiny portable, one Sony Trinitron set from 1976, and two other average sized (maybe 19 inch) sets. But NONE were of the modern high def wide screen type. Kinda like having five cars that start with a manual crank (like a model T), but none that with an ignition key!

That certainly strikes me as an exaggeration.

My house (counting only what is plugged in):
- multiple light switches in many rooms
- 5 lamps
- 3 TV sets
- 1 stereo system
- 1 radio
- 4 alarm clocks
- 1 DVD player
- 2 cable TV boxes
- 7 Kitchen electronics: Fridge, dishwasher, washing machine, extractor fan, microwave, toaster, kettle. Four unused plug sockets.
- Bathroom 1 - only freezer
- Bathroom 2 - electric toothbrush
- 2 cars
- 10 outside lights (we just had some new ones installed at the bottom of our garden which are frustratingly superfluous - I don't know how many there are, but there are three big ones up the top and I think the garden ones are more like fairy lights. I imagine most people only have one or two)
- 2 things on charge somewhere in the house (not counting those listed elsewhere)
- 1 desktop computer
- 1 desktop screen
- 1 laptop computer
- 1 printer
- 1 modem
- 1 wireless router
- 2 phone bases
- seasonal lighting - Christmas etc

My appliance/power point tally is less (as I suspect everyone's will be since this is really a list of all that is possible rather than what is likely) but the original observation is interesting.

In the 1920's, far less was powered by electricity and was powered instead by a combination of human muscle and harnessing of (non-electric) natural forces. Clothes were dried by air and wind rather than a dryer. Homes were cooled by a strategic placement of windows that facilitated cross breeze (relevant in places with hot summer) and window canopies. People went out to shows instead of watching TV and had player pianos powered by hand crank rather than stereos/ipods.

The things we want accomplished haven't changed (clean and dry clothes, entertainment etc.) but the means sure has. We have gained the ability to do more quantities of things (more lighting=longer productive time, especially for businesses, line drying clothes takes forever when there is a lot of moisture in the air etc.) . But we have lost something too- mostly muscle. All those human powered things add up as exercise. We also lost relaxation (all that electric lighting making post-sunlight productivity possible also made it mandatory). And we lost some social connection points. Hand cranking a player piano while everybody sings along really is a more communal activity than iPod earbuds. So is going out to 'the picture show' rather than watching TV.

Scenario #2 is not living. It is enslavement.

I thought you werepossibly overstating the average household in the 1920's, but then maybe not, after a quick search I came up with this Electricity 1920-29

Stlll I suspect the majority of houses were not wired up. Does anyone have better info????

As an example of relatively old vs relatively modern. I built a house in 2006, unfortunately my relationship with the person I built the house with did not work out and we sold the house. I moved into rented accommodation, but my ill fortune is handy for this thread

New House 2006

4 bedrooms
2 living areas
2 bathrooms
2 Toilets
1 Laundry

Each bedroom had three double power points, I telephone socket, 1 ethernet connection, and one tv socket

Both living areas had many electrical sockets, 2 ethernet connections, 2 phone connections and 2 tv sockets

The Bathrooms had multiple electrical connections as well as heat lamps

my rented abode is supposedly three bedroom, I live here alone. What is officially the main bedroom is my lounge, the second bedroom is my bedroom, the third bedroom is my shed, the official lounge room is part of the kitchen and is where I have my table and computer.

It has a i bathroom and the laundry is in a hallway

The lounge has 1 double electricity socket and no tv socket (remember the lounge is officially a bedroom)

The same for bed 2 and 3

The bathroom has i singel socket

The laundry has i double socket

The kitchen and official lounge room has a total of 1 double electricity sockets and 2 single, along with 1 tv socket.

As for lighting my old house had downlights all over the place, the rental has one light in each room.

The rental is about 80 years old and has had some renovation.

In case you are wondering. I have multiple extension cables tacked to the skirting boards and crossing the floors all around the rental. My wonderful partner who has Multiple Sclerosis and whose rehab nurse asks her does she have any obstacles at home, often says when she visits "obstacles, are you kidding"

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 11 Sep 2014, 7:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

It does keep people tied to the grid. 1920's living required a lot of human-powered machinery which is difficult(or impossible) to find these days. Good luck finding a hand-crank drill or ringer washer. Push mowers and clothes lines are still out there but many areas have regulations against using them outdoors (you can put up a line in the basement but it's slower without sun and wind). Most awful of all is the way recent technology has made it possible for many jobs to creep into what used to be personal time. There didn't use to be any such thing as 'on call' and 'reachable by cell phone'.

Regarding Australia I found this
http://www.skwirk.com/p-c_s-56_u-418_t- ... wars-1920s
which is really about class differences but does discuss the upper class embracing new electrical tech'



Regarding the U.S.
http://www.partselect.com/JustForFun/Ri ... iance.aspx


which means that in the U.S. a >2/3 majority of homes were wired up with electricity.

Later it says this:



So Narrator's assessment of 1920's home electrics is quite possibly understated, at least for the U.S. Many of the appliances were gigantic and clunky and required human muscular intervention at some point, but would still be plugged in. 1918 brought us the electric waffle iron. Priorities!

I can't remember the exact year, but the 1920's list was prompted by a similar description given to me by a very old guy I knew 20 years ago.

It also makes me think of all the leisure time we were promised, maybe 30 years ago, with the advent of faster computers. We were told work would be more relaxed and half the hours because computers and robotics would do all the hard work. Yet up until about 30 or 40 years ago, a family could survive on one income. Now you need both parents working. Wages and salaries are now dependent on productivity. So if workers haven't benefited from computers and robotics in business, who has?

Reading old speculative magazine articles, I have encountered the 'more relaxed/less hours' promise of the future. It never pans out because it depends on something that would never happen: employers paying the same regardless of how many hours employees are working or what they do. Wages and salary have always been dependent on productivity. I have no idea why magazine writers ever thought that would change. Did they honestly think employers would cut employees hours but maintain the same pay? Or keep hours the same and also require the same amount of work even after it became possible to do more in the same same amount of time. I suppose they did. Or they didn't but they knew that saying it was a great way to sell articles.

So who has benefited from robotics and computers in business? The business owners have of course, since this tech allows greater productivity and global reach (international business before computers must have been very slow). It hasn't benefited the workers in their capacity as workers, but it has benefited them in their capacity as consumers. And there's the rub. To give up these things to regain employment for workers would mean the same people had to give up these things we have grown used to as consumers. Countless bank tellers lost their jobs when ATMs came into being, but who is willing to give up ATMs and go back to only getting money by talking to a bank teller? For every job lost to tech, there is a gain to the consumer. Since the consumer and the worker are the exact same person, we are in a bit of a bind.

The businesses. It takes less personnel to do the same amount of work, letting companies make more by using less labor. And since computer aided work has decreased the required man-hours for many of the same tasks to be accomplished, more responsibilities get added to existing personnel (with increased required work outpacing increased efficiency). This has also helped some small businesses get off the ground that would have been impossible just 15 years ago, but has also served to make already large corporations strengthen their stranglehold in certain markets.

But the increase in competition for job seekers, stagnant wages, and medical and college costs outpacing inflation combined with increased standards of living are the biggest factors in the need for a 2 income household.

Ralph Kramden and his wife had far less in the 1950's. Ralph was a bus driver--working/lower-middle class.

Maybe he was cheap--but he wasn't poverty-striken.

No telephone
No refrigerator (an icebox, instead)
No TV
Gas stove
No evidence, really, of any electrical appliance.

He was able to have a telephone and a TV for a short time--the apartment had the capacity.

I don't believe most people had refrigerators in the 1920's, even in urban areas; hence, the iceman cometh!

Less than half the people had radios in the 1920s, even in urban areas.

The car was becoming more common--but most people still didn't own cars during the 1920s. Horse-drawn vehicles were still common in rural areas, uncommon in urban areas.

That 1920s house referred to above seems to have been owned by a somewhat affluent person. In the 1940's, it looked like Elmer Fudd had a similar house. That was the cartoon where Fudd was singing about the Month of May, then took Bugs Bunny home to eat.

Most people had modern plumbing and electricity in urban areas during the 1920s; the same can't be said for rural areas.

I wonder how many people in 1st world countries choose to live without electricity, gas, phone or town water.

I had a friend 30 years ago who had a shed on a rural property. He planned to move there permanently and live that way.
I'm betting he didn't.

It's probably more possible in most parts of coastal and near-coastal Australia than it is in most parts of the US--primarily because of climate. It gets cold in Melbourne--but hardly ever below zero Celsius.