Made In America - Bill Bryson [145]
Summers could be equally unbearable. Not only was there no practical way of getting rid of the heat, but the lack of proper sanitary services in towns, and the proliferation of horses and other animals, meant that flies, mosquitoes and other insects thrived to an extent unthinkable today. At least, food could now be kept. By the 1840s many middle-class homes enjoyed the benefits of an icebox (an Americanism first recorded in 1839), and the ice industry was huge. By mid-century Boston alone was shipping out 150,000 tons of ice a year, some of it going as far as India and China.
Improved lighting remained a constant preoccupation. Until the late 1700s illumination was limited to tallow candles and whale oil, but both were inefficient – it would take a hundred candles to create as much light as a single modern light-bulb – and beyond the means of most households. Until the early 1800s the average American home existed in nearly total darkness once night fell. For the middle classes, illumination improved dramatically with the invention in 1783 of the Argand lamp (named for its Swiss creator), which had greater intensity and less flicker. The next step forward was the invention of kerosene by a Canadian, Abraham Gesner, in 1858, and by petroleum a year later.14
But the big transformation came with gas. Initially gas was used to light streets – Baltimore had gas-lamps as early as 1816, before Paris or Berlin – but the dirt, odours and volatility of gas meant it could not be safely relied on for domestic purposes until after the Civil War. Once these problems were dealt with, gas swept the nation. Each gas outlet, or gasolier, provided as much light as a dozen candles. By 1895, it was estimated, the average middle class home was twenty times better lit than it had been at mid-century.15 Even cleaned up and made more stable, gas remained dirty and dangerous. It emitted unpleasant, potentially lethal fumes that required special vents to clear the air. Even in the best-ventilated homes the carbonic acid and smoke that seeped from them took a heavy toll on books, curtains, wallpaper and soft furniture, as well as the eyes, lungs and clothes of the inhabitants.
What was really needed was electricity, and not just for lighting but for scores of other appliances that Americans had the prosperity to buy if only the means existed to make them practical. Before electricity, labour-saving devices had about them a certain air of the ridiculous, most notably a rudimentary vacuum cleaner consisting of two bellows that the user wore like shoes. As the user plodded about the room, the exertions on the bellows created a suction action of sorts, which could be used to sweep up dust and crumbs. It was, as you might imagine, not terribly efficient. Simpler, quieter and far less exhausting was the carpet sweeper, an invention of the 1860s. Other offerings of the pre-electrical age were a gas-heated iron and an elaborate contraption called the ‘Water Witch’, which operated with pressurized water and which the makers boasted would not only vacuum the carpets, but could be employed to dry one’s hair and massage aching muscles.16
In 1882, domestic electricity at last became a possibility when Thomas Edison began providing electricity on a commercial basis. By mid-decade 200 of New York City’s wealthiest households were enjoying the illumination of 5,000 light-bulbs – or electric lamps as the Edison company