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A history of kitchen convenience
Our kitchens are full of convenience appliances that we take for granted, but domestic life hasn’t always been this easy. So when did two of the most common kitchen conveniences arrive on the scene, and how did they evolve into the machines we now use daily?
Keep it cool
Before artificial cold boxes became available, people looked to more natural solutions to help prolong the life of their food and drink. Icehouses, often built near lakes, were packed with snow and ice, and perishable foods were stored inside. Many people found that simply leaving items outside in the winter helped to keep them fresh for longer.
From the 11th century to the 1800s, many inventors contributed advances in fridge technology. The two most significant developments came in 1834, when US inventor Jacob Perkins created the cooling compression system, and 1857, when Australian James Harrison developed an ice-making and refrigeration system that was used in the industrial meat packing industry.
The home units that we know today use absorption refrigeration systems, applying a heat source to provide energy that drives the cooling system, which was invented by a pair of Swedish students and commercialised in 1922 by Electrolux, among others.
Carl Von Linde was the first to patent and make a compact refrigerator for the home, but these were expensive and cumbersome, with mechanical parts, motors and compressors which often had to be installed in a basement or other storage room.
In 1923 Frigidaire introduced the first self-contained unit and continues to selldistinctive American-style fridge freezers today.
Separate freezers became commonplace in the US in the 1940s and were rolled out for mass production after the Second World War. But it wasn’t until the 1970s, with the arrival of supermarkets and further advances in food packaging technology, that frozen foods and self-contained freezers became widely available in the western world.
Dish it out
The first patent for a dishwasher was for a hand-powered wooden device filed in 1850, while another patent for a similar device, this time with a rack system, was filed in 1865. However, it wasn’t until 1886 that we first saw the beginnings of the dishwasher as we know it.
Josephine Cochrane, wealthy granddaughter of steamboat inventor John Fitch, exhibited her dishwasher invention at the 1893 Chicago World Fair. She had reportedly come up with the idea for the device to help prevent her servants from damaging her fine china whilst washing by hand.
Permanent plumbing for dishwashers arrived in the 1920s and in 1924 William Howard Livens invented the small domestic dishwasher with the front door, wire rack and rotating spray features that are still familiar today.
Electric drying elements were added in the 1940s, but while dishwashers were widely used in commercial environments, they also only became commonplace in domestic kitchens during the 1970s.
Thankfully few now feature the more awkward top-loading design common in the 1950s, which required users to reach in to stack and remove dishes, and washing up after a big meal is no longer a job that requires getting your hands dirty.
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