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Even so, the marvel and mystery of it all was very much alive, however unrealistic and unattainable. Manufacturers continued to demonstrate electricity's promise at world exhibitions and in model electric homes outfitted with clothes washers and dryers, dishwashers, stoves, and refrigerators. Books such as Electricity in Every-Day Life and Electric Cooking, Heating, Cleaning, Etc., Being a Manual of Electricity in the Service of the Home gave readers a brief history of electricity and explained how it would inevitably revolutionize their lives. One author exclaimed, "Fancy cooking cutlets and frying pancakes with captured lighting!" Such books promoted electricity not only as a timesaver for women but also as a replacement for domestic help, which had become scarce as workers increasingly chose more lucrative and independent work in factories over domestic employment. One advocate of appliances proclaimed: "There is no household operation capable of being mechanically performed, of which, through the motor, electricity cannot become the drudge and willing slave."

Magazine articles declared that the electric life would bring unimaginable ease. In 1904 Scientific American published "Electricity in the Household," which described an electric iron, griddle, toaster, and cereal boiler, along with a chafing dish, about which the author claimed: "A traveler will find this stove particularly useful. It can be carried in the overcoat pocket." He also described a sewing machine, the speed of which "can be very delicately regulated.... The operator can assume any easy, comfortable position as the only duty required is to steer the cloth under the needle." In the accompanying photograph, a woman dressed, it seems, for a social occasion, is half turned away from her work. Her legs are crossed casually to the side, and she's guiding material toward the needle with her left hand while her other is free and draped over the chair back. She could be chatting with a friend. The author asserts, "Even an invalid can safely operate a machine thus driven."

In these early decades of the twentieth century, electric light bulbs were sold as both a brilliant mystery and a mystery attached to the past. The earliest print ads for them had been straightforward, simply stating their wattage and size. They would often be accompanied by a line drawing of the bulb, base, and filament. But particularly after the development of the brighter, more efficient, and longer-lasting tungsten filament in 1911, the ads became more elaborate. General Electric, still by far the largest manufacturer of light bulbs and lamps, launched a new trademark: Mazda, named after Ahura Mazda, the Persian god of light. Some of the ads for Mazda bulbs featured a reclining woman, draped in flowing robes, who held a light bulb aloft in her outstretched hand and gazed at the lifted brilliance. The bulb itself glowed without any connection to wires and sockets. Not even the filament was obvious, as if to suggest that the new was not so different from the old after all, for nothing in the ads hinted at the way light was now tethered to a growing industrial grid.

Electric lines eventually made their way into middle-class urban and suburban neighborhoods, spurred by Samuel Insull's adoption of the demand meter in Chicago. The meter encouraged use because it allowed power companies to charge lower rates to customers who consumed more than the minimum amount of electricity. Insull, as president of Commonwealth Edison in Chicago, had foreseen increased domestic demand for electricity and actively sought out suburban customers, offering cheap wiring for their homes. Historian Harold Platt notes that Insull "went after every kind of customer from the biggest to the smallest. Maybe the smallest was the household and the housewife. In one famous campaign, he brought in 10,000 GE irons and gave them away free, so to speak, to anyone who would sign up for service."

When electricity finally arrived at their doors, families usually bought smaller appliances first, though not entirely because