3 April 2018
A brief history of Appliances
For most of us, our day to day lives are made easier by a vast array of appliances that fulfil a multitude of useful purposes. From making our coffee in the morning to heating our bed at night, we are surrounded by appliances. It seems there is an appliance for just about everything now, from nose hair shavers to electric can openers, if you can think of it, it is out there for sale.
But it wasn’t always like this, until about the middle of the 19th Century, most people had little in the way of appliances, and what appliances they did have would have been made by hand by someone locally. During the second industrial revolution, powered by the newly tamed electricity and characterised by mass production and standardisation, the marketplace was suddenly flooded with appliances.
This was the first age of the appliance and aided by a regular electrical supply, plumbed water and discretionary income, the production and consumption of appliances boomed. Between the late 19th Century and the mid 20th Century, an enormous amount of different appliances were invented, patented and sold, including vacuum cleaners, televisions, washing machines, irons and radios.
The next big boom in appliances followed the end of the Second World War when the middle classes in the West swelled and the technological innovations developed during the war lowered production costs and improved appliances.
Today we are living in the third boom, that created by the electronics revolution. The spread of electronic devices in the past quarter-century has been enormous and shows no sign of abating.
DID YOU KNOW? Fallon Services can repair your broken or faulty appliances. Visit our appliance repairs page to find out more!
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