CHAPTER XXXIX
LATEST INVENTIONS
There may be nothing new under the sun but there is always something inviting under the roofs of our manufactories, in these labor, time and energy sparing days. Not to keep abreast of the news is perhaps to lose at least a week out of your year in time and a few tons of actual effort.
There is an ideal mixer on the market which attacks and synthesizes a mayonnaise, cream or eggs, mixes cakes, makes bread of its ingredients, and all in all can almost be hitched to the stars and change the rotations of the solar system, extravagantly speaking. It is modeled on a giant mixer formerly used in hotels and soda fountains but now adapted to home use. Furthermore, it is prepared to annihilate meats, nuts and fruits. It is a complete power unit and worked by electricity.
_Multum in parvo_--here you have it. A little washing machine that can be a sweet pal of the portable typewriter--less its weight, not requiring, though, either ink or hand labor. This tiny wooden washer is placed under a water faucet and the weakest stream of water revolves its little cylinder so that you can wash two or three shirtwaists and six hankies and seven towels in one operation while you sit and think how lucky you are. Fancy this little fairy in a hotel room, in the country, where the wash ladies are obsolete and your nurse won’t wash--or where you don’t want to trust your trousseau to any laundry resident in your rural haunt. And it is invaluable for the baby’s wash--because the baby is no respecter of labor and needs much rehabilitation.
It fits on any wash-stand, is simply made, easily cleaned _très bon marché_. So your parlor, bedroom and bathroom need not be a limitation to your wardrobe’s perfection.
How many times have you toasted bread at your morning meal--the meal at which most of us are poorly adjusted? How many times have we nearly (?) sworn because your magic electric toaster only did the trick on one side of the bread? Now--there has been born a toaster which, when one side of the toast is done, “turns the other cheek” (by a pat of one’s finger on a lever) and in most traditionally ethical fashion, so that you have self-turned toast, well cooked, waiting for you--disgruntled or radiant. It’s a nice thought--to have toast without blackened fingers or disintegrated character.
Every sick room at some time or another needs, besides air, a gentle deodorant. In accordance with electricity’s forward march an electric incense burner can be bought which though not in the traditional mode is very much to the manner of to-day.
Whether this will appeal to our Greenwich Village friends who espouse with all their modernity archaic methods, we cannot tell--yet would we suggest this device whether they be incensed or not.
Soon there will be on the market a wee electric washette--a portable six shirtwaist or twelve soxer which washes clothes and will spare the fare on silk hose or lingerie. Most city and country dwellings have electricity and in a few months this vital little machine will be yours for the paying.
Bathrooms to-day without the shower would be like the kiss to the strange maiden who liked it not, were her lover unmustachioed. In order to have a faultless shower--for they are often built haphazardly so that they leak, spatter, burn and scatter--a standardized shower has been put on the market which, when ordered by the architect, can be put into any bathroom. It can be in curved or square design and in almost any size. After installation it can be finished in paint, marble, tile or in whatever uniform your bathroom mobilized. The fixtures are the most modern, completely covering the bather with sprays enticing and affording thorough refreshment.
Practically speaking, the electric washing machine in which boiling water is put is a perfect instrument. Yet we can see some instances where the self-gas-heated electric washer might be a great convenience if the clothes are not permitted to have the dirt boiled in and the gas jets left burning beneath them. To-day, to meet the demand of a self-heating washer, there are a few being put on the market.
Along the line of washing machines is a “filler” which acts promptly and swiftly so that the washing machine is filled and emptied of water with a minimum effort. There are two or three of these assistants on the market--two of which are good but one of which we think better. They can be tried before purchasing.
ELECTRIFIED TABLES
Furniture is furniture. That seems rational--it has beauty but not life. Yet in the Middle Edison Period in which we live, furniture arterially supplied with electric current has come to pass. Table tipping has gone out, but electrified tea tables have come in. There is no limit to what the electrified tea table might not be, or might not contain. Tea, toast, lectures or music fill its usual shallow depths. But now a veritable companion to man--not only a pal but an advisor. Yet you must be careful lest the amiable invention ousts the charm of tea itself. But all new inventions when they seem the most perilous are the most useful. Think of the charms of the electrified toilet table--shaving-water hot, curling irons ready, lights in perfect range. It is beyond imagination lovely. Then think of the electrified bed! It is too--Enough!
Overlooking the fact that an ironing board and iron are prohibited in many hotels, they seem to arrive in other guises. A folding contraption delightfully like a little box has been made and charmingly cretonned, which is itself the telescopic board and inside of whose folds repose the leveling iron, electric connections, etc.
SLEEPING ACCOMODATIONS
Gunpowder can be made out of the air, but that isn’t what we are looking for--after all it’s a constructive use we give it--breathing and health. Of late, people are longing for health--see the new religious sects. So the home longs for it, and devices are continually being made to give the home more air and better. An automatic device to make rooms breathe is now a practical thing. It looks like a little box of copper wire on one side, open on the other and fitted with little shutters so that the warm air escapes and the cool fresh air is imprisoned in the room. It is put on outside the window sash and without draft you breathe clean, fresh morning air.
You can always supply a bed to the new-comer, or make your living room into a more livable and sleeping one by the use of the new beds housed behind a small door in the wall which swing easily to position at night. The small door can be near the porch, so the sleeping porch by day can be free of bedding and be an upper porch only. Furthermore, if the door be placed rightly, the bed can be swung to the porch or to the room. Rainy nights or cyclonic you could sleep indoors. It is not a folding bed with that device’s many drawbacks. Of course this is more practically installed when the house is built, yet it can successfully be put in afterward. Its makers also offer a concealed ironing board--behind closed doors--which for a limited home is a comfort.
Should your home not have enough electric connections which, of course, it should have--you can now get electric sockets with two or three plug extensions. This can double your electric elasticity. For example, a lamp and an electric piano player can get their nutrition from one base plug--and you can put two bulbs in one plug. A makeshift, of course, but it doesn’t look like one; and if your home was built in the pre-electric era you can keep up with the times with this device.
Lamps seem to-day to be one of the newer adjustabilities. A very useful lamp to fix on the piano to light the eye of the musical page will be a real convenience to the home in which the piano has to be in the living room. The whole room can be dark except for this illumination of the music pages--the audience can sit in darkness and have their comfort evolve from the lighted region. Here is a time when from sitting in darkness, light, comfort and good deeds may emerge. This lamp can be had in all wood finishes and can be placed on beds or chairs if wanted in these ways.
Not snubbing other devices at all, we must lump a few suggestions in electric apparatus. For example, the hair dryers, giving cold and hot air, the violet ray machines, the vibrator--all three made in convenient size and light weight. With these three things your boudoir is much more complete.
Yesterday, the silence cloth of cloth was all we had to put under your tablecloth. To-day asbestos in all its fire impenetrability is to be had in comfortable sheets for table use--to protect the polished surface in entirety and enrich the tablecloth. You have known the mats in asbestos--now you have the table rug.
Jars of pottery can be rapidly turned into electric lamps by a new device made to fit down in and raise above a lamp shade, bulb and complete paraphernalia. Think of the good uses some old wedding presents can be put to! This device comes in sizes to fit jars with 3″, 4″, 5″, or 6″ openings at the top.
Very nearly meeting the constant question: “Do you know of an instantaneous heater?” comes the electric water heater which when attached to your faucet gives instantaneous, exceedingly hot water. It is a small thing not more than 8″ high and will be a boon of boons when absolutely perfect.
During the summer, the attic gets overheated and makes itself an impossible place for sleeping. This need not be, as there is a material that comes in sheets to line the walls and ceiling. For cellars the warmth is kept in; for attics the heat is kept out. Could there be anything more simple and adaptable.
To close this chapter safely we can do no more than suggest a ready-made fence! It has been on the market years--for the pastures--but is now being introduced for the garden use of people who don’t want to or can’t make a new fence. It is delightful--of rough hewn wood, 4, 5, or 6 bars, posted and diagonalled. For a rambling place for roses and vines it has no equal and to be able to buy fences by the yard for the yard is veritably both joy and comfort brought to your very doors.
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