ABSTRACT
The design and mass production of technologically based products for use in the home began in earnest in the years spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, early versions of many products that are now taken for granted were in production – the telephone, vacuum cleaner, washing machine, toaster, electric cooker and the earliest product for playing recorded music, the phonograph. Others, such as the radio and television, quickly followed. All these small domestic machines progressed from the development of larger machines that characterized the earlier years of the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions and, in turn, these revolutions went hand in hand with the philosophical revolution that spawned the Enlightenment. Over the course of the 20th century, designers struggled to define and redefine these small machines for the home and, as a consequence, have produced an endless stream of variations on a theme – variations that have both delighted and destroyed, but which, invariably, can be characterized as ‘fleeting’. Despite the apparent benefits of the concepts they reify, the actual objects themselves have failed to be of any lasting value. They are here today and gone tomorrow – forever replaced with newer, more up-to-date, and more technologically advanced variations.
