Customer Reviews

Gadgets and Necessities: An Encyclopedia of Household Innovations

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Gadgets and Necessities is a fascinating encyclopedia with a slightly misleading title and a misguided introductory essay. To its credit, the entries are well-written, amply illustrated, and adequately researched, but it should be made clear that this is an historical encyclopedia rather than a general encyclopedia. Further, it is a broad-ranging survey of household appliances and tools, their designs, and the institutions and individuals who made them possible in the United State, Europe, and Japan. The authors survey the range of accoutrements found in the middle class home in the twentieth century, and touch upon kitchen, lawn and garden, and bathroom implements; major manufacturers and retailers such as Apple Computer, AT&T, Hamilton Beach, EMI, and Kmart; industry associations such as the National Electric Light Association, and the major movements in product design. Inexplicably, though, the authors claim that "an alternative title to this book could therefore be "Electricity and Desire." While the electrical and electronic devices represented here predominate, there are many non-electrical entries as well, ranging from Brillo pads to bidets, with no attempt to treat them as special cases or link them to the development of electrical technologies. Indeed, there is no good reason to call this an encyclopedia of electrical appliance history, though there is much good electrical history here. Despite these objections, the reader interested in capsule histories of the most familiar types of household objects should be delighted with this book. It is an excellent reference work that will undoubtedly become the standard work of its type.