Made In America - Bill Bryson [146]
Outdoors, however, it was another matter. Almost overnight America became the most illuminated country in the world. By the 1890s Broadway was already being described as ‘the Great White Way’ because of its dazzling lights (almost all of them advertising products). People came from all over just to see the lights, which included the world’s first flashing sign, for Manhattan Beach and its hotels. Standing 50 feet high and 80 feet wide, the sign would light up line by line and then flash rhythmically before starting the cycle over again. It seemed a wonder of modern technology. In fact it was manually operated by a man in a rooftop shack.
In 1910 Broadway got a sign that was a wonder of electrical engineering. Rising the equivalent of seven storeys above the rooftop of the Hotel Normandie and incorporating 20,000 coloured light-bulbs, it offered in intricate detail the illusion of a 30-second chariot race, complete with cracking whips and flying dust. People were so agog over it that squads of police had to be assigned to the area to keep pedestrians and traffic moving lest the whole of Manhattan grind to a halt.19 Almost as arresting were the lights of Luna Park on Coney Island. Two hundred thousand bulbs picked out ornamental patterns and the outlines of the towers and minarets at the amusement park, turning it literally into a night-time wonderland.20 Even now it looks quite wonderful in pictures.
By 1896 electricity had become such an accepted part of life that people were familiarly referring to it as juice. But the expense held people back. In 1910 just one home in ten had electricity. By 1930, however, 70 per cent of American households, some 20 million homes, had electricity – more than the rest of the world combined. The proportion would have been higher still except that rural electrification took so long to complete. As late as 1946, barely half of American farm homes had electricity. (But then only a tenth had an indoor flush toilet.)
As electricity became more widely available, electrical products began to come on to the market. Singer introduced the first electric sewing-machine in 1889. The electric fan appeared in 1891, the electric iron in 1893, the electric vacuum cleaner in 1901, the electric stove – sometimes called a fireless cooker – in 1902, the electric washing machine in 1909, the electric toaster in 1910, and the electric dishwasher in 1918. By 1917 the American householder could choose between fifty types of electrical appliances and eagerly did so. In that year, Americans spent $175 million on them.21 Within a little over a decade, that figure would rise to no less than $2.4 billion a year.22
The new and fast-changing market for electrical appliances often gave small companies a chance to thrive. After General Electric turned down the idea of an automatic washing machine, a small outfit named Bendix, which had no experience of manufacturing household appliances, took up the idea and within a decade had become one of America’s biggest manufacturers of appliances. Much the same happened with a small subsidiary of General Motors called Frigidaire, which saw an opening for domestic refrigerators and so successfully seized it that the name almost became generic.23 The idea of the refrigerator might have been new but the word wasn’t. It had existed in English since 1611, and had been used as a synonym for icebox since 1824.24
Refrigerators, rather surprisingly, were among the last common electrical appliances to catch on. Frigidaire began production in 1918, but the first models were ungainly and