"In the year 2008 a bride will be carried over the threshold of a glass house. Her kitchen may be glass-walled with a glass refrigerator, glass chairs, shelves and cabinets.
"She'll cook with throwaway glass containers which she plucks from the supermarket shelves, uses as cooking utensils in an electronic oven and then places on a dining table as serving dishes."
According to Rairdon, more glass will go into walls and roofs than ever before, as well as into clothing fabrics, household curtains, rugs and other furnishings.
He chose the year 2008 because it will be the 400th anniversary of this country's first industry - a small glass plant in Jamestown, Va.
See also:
1999 A.D. (1967)
Frigidaire Kitchen of the Future (1957)
That 60's Food of the Future
Monsanto House of the Future (1957-1967)
Call a Serviceman (Chicago Tribune, 1959)
The Electronic Brain Made Beef Stew (1959)
Something must be wrong with its radar eye! (Chicago Tribune, 1959)
Computersville is almost here (1970)
14 comments:
Well, we've got glass dildoes....
He's right about walls, if you count fiberglass.
What's this obsession the futurists of old have with disposable items?
I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Are you listening?
Plastics. errr.. GLASS! I meant glass... damn!
--Bonnach
Well, in modern architecture there's a lot of steel and glass actually nowadays. We've even got glass balustrades here in our uni.
What would I want tot live in a glass house? People would see my love handles and me picking my nose and stuff.
I was going to ask the same think, yorrike. No wonder our planet's so screwed up today. Scientists in the '50s must have had some weird phobia about dirty things. "Clothes dirty! Dishes dirty! Must get rid of the dirt!"
Kind of puts Howard Hughes' late-in-life germ obsessions in an interesting light.
Not all glass is transparent. Just remember never to throw stones.
In the dystopian novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, the buildings were all made of glass—a very uncomfortable notion.
yorrike & wutzke,
I think the disposable obsession grew out of a concern for perceived future water shortages. If we can throw stuff away after one use, then we're not using up water to wash them, or polluting the water source with soaps.
That, and I think they figured it would appeal to housewives: no more washing the dishes or doing laundry in the future!
He got the electronic oven part right, oddly enough.
I'd personally welcome a greater use of glass. It's easily recyclable, and easier to keep clean than plastic. And it probably is a wiser choice in a microwave.
You're right Allen,
This obsession with disposable everything came primarily from the unwanted (and time wasting) chores that go with clean up after meals, laundry, etc. These chores used to take much longer than now, with the tools they had to do them with. Not to mention, not as effective, either. It's the same with the food pill thing. Meals took hours to produce, so why not eliminate that chore with pills? Advances in apliances made the latter unnecessary, and eco-awareness made the former a bitter food pill to swallow.
Whatever you do, don't throw any stones!
"her Kitchen"... "She cooks.." Huh!?
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