Stylized picture of women in carriage from 1905, I did a while back and just found on a CD. From the other side of my husband’s family, Americans related to General Douglas McArthur. (First Cousins). I think I used Illustrator to do this.
The Nicholsons electrified Tighsolas in 1913 (I have the bill!) And I have the contract! Wiring Tighsolas took 52 hours and cost 86 dollars. They were set up for lighting only, although Richmond Electric was encouraging customers to cook with electricity. An oil furnace was put in decades later. Most new homes in Quebec are heated electrically; it’s cheaper to install and electricity is still relatively cheap here.
My 70′s home is heated electrically, AND we have 3 fireplaces. The author of this piece, the excellent reporter Chester Carton, did not predict how chimneys would continue to be built into stand alone homes because 21st century homeowners think they are charming.
(The Tighsolas letters reveal how much work it was to keep a Canadian house warm back in 1910 era: Of course, at the time of the infamous Ice Storm in 1998, many Quebecers came to value a good fire-place and wood-burning stove. The electricity went down for weeks! We all were rendered helpless -and quite desperate- by the blackout.)
And just like everyone else, Mr. Carton failed to see how electricity would turn the home into an entertainment haven. Few houses today have enough outlets to accommodate all the computers, DVD players, etc but many people still prefer cooking with gas, especially barbequing in summer.
Margaret McLeod won many awards for her bread and baking. She tested the temperature of the oven by using her elbow! (By the way, I have a Tighsolas flat iron. We have been using it as a doorstop. It weighs 7 or 8 pounds, about the same as my exercise weights. I work out for about 45 minutes every second day, Flora took TWO DAYS to iron one dress. (This will be a chapter in Flo in the City, my novel about a young girl coming of age in the pivotal 1908-1913. Yes, it took skill and muscle to run a house one hundred years ago, that is, unless you had servants.)
Running the Home by Electricity
By Chester Carton
Technical World Magazine, 1910
Abridged
If Santa Clause is as enterprising as he is represented to be he is very busy just about now developing a method of filling stockings without climbing down chimneys, because the electric light companies, electrical engineers, manufacturers of electric specialties and other designing persons with electric axes to grind are doing their honest best to abolish the familiar flues that have so long served the benevolent purposes of the good saint. The house without chimneys has already appeared and its attractions are so alluring that it is likely to be copied extensively. With chimneys there are dust and grime and soot and ashes and smoke and coal gas and trouble and soured tempers and appalling bills. Any householder would be glad to get rid of these afflictions. That the heat and an almost abundant list of other comforts and conveniences can be had without the chimney in any home where an ordinary electric light current is available has been abundantly demonstrated. In fact, the electric experts have passed beyond the stage of showing that electric household appliances will work and are now busy making economy tests to establish their cheapness. …..No more need the head of the house vault out of his warm bed barefooted upon a floor as cold ice, shivering down to the murky depths of the cellar to wrestle with the furnace. Instead he has only to set the time switch to throw the current on to the electric heaters…Meanwhile his better half is also getting an additional half hour of sleep because she will not wait minute for the fire to heat up. All there is to do to get a light breakfast is to snap the switches on the electric coffee purcolator, the electric toaster, the electric cereal boiler, the electric chafing dish, the electric plate warmer…On washing day the electric motor will run the washing machine and the wringer for her; on ironing day she will get through her task in half the time by using an electric flat iron (there are more than 3,000,000 electric flat irons in use in the US today.) And when Saturday comes around, she can mix the bread with an electric bread mixer and do the baking in an electric oven far better than she ever did, for the electric heat can be regulated to a hair’s breath..
