A Brief Electrical History

By Arrol Gellner

The twentieth century came and went, but it left behind the biggest advancements in home technologies. We can now read a book at night and not worry about burning the house down with candles if we fall asleep, watch television, keep in touch with people over seas over the phone and connect to the internet at the speed of light.

While it's sobering to realize that these conveniences are so recent, what's more surprising is that almost all of them harken from one brief span of the Victorian era, from 1870 through the turn of the century. While we may think of the our own late, lamented 20th Century as the ultimate measure of technical progress, it was the 19th Century that brought a revolution in housing technology.

A host of innovations, including piped-in hot and cold water, indoor bathrooms, central heating, electricity and telephone all entered the modern home during these few decades.

Gas lighting, known in Europe as early as the 1830s, was widely introduced in the United States just after the Civil War. Although it was sooty, noxious and produced a feeble amount of light, it proved a harbinger of great progress during the remainder of the century.

The introduction of pressurized water systems around 1870 set the stage for running hot and cold water, and hence the advent of indoor plumbing. By 1880, most homes had an indoor toilet, although at first the Victorians, who were obsessed with fears of deadly sewer gas, confined it to its own compartment - hence the name "water closet." Later, however, the W.C. was annexed to the bathroom, yielding the now-familiar arrangement of sink, toilet and tub.

Although central heating was known as early as the 1820s, most middle-class homeowners couldn't afford it, and instead relied on coal-burning fireplace grates for heat. This in turn required every heated room to adjoin a chimney, dictating compact, boxy floor plans. By 1880, though, coal-fired central heating systems were becoming more commonplace. Aside from the obvious improvement in comfort and convenience over the fireplace, central heating freed room arrangements from their historical tether to the chimney, encouraging the rambling, asymmetrical floor plans of late Victorian home styles such as the Queen Anne.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell intoned the famous words, "Watson, come here; I want you," through his experimental transceiver and, for better or worse, unleashed the telephone on society. By 1900, it was already quite commonplace in homes across America.

Gas lighting made a big leap forward in 1887 with the introduction of the Welsbach gas mantel, which produced a brighter, soot-free flame, but by that time it was largely moot. Thomas Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, had seen to that when he invented the incandescent lamp in 1879. By the mid-1890s, the electrification of the United States was already well underway. In older houses, gas chandeliers were pulled down and electric wires run through the piping.

Electric lighting was such a powerful symbol of progress that early lighting fixtures proudly flaunted bare bulbs so that no one would dare mistake them for gaslights. It wouldn't be long before every room in the house had an incandescent ceiling fixture and -- wonder of wonders -- a single electrical outlet.

Think about that next time you plug in the yogurt maker.