INVENTIONS THAT CHANGED OUR LIVES
. . . according to consumer magazine Which? 60 years after it began. And, as JAN MOIR admits, some (like her dishwasher) she prizes more than the man in her life
SIXTY years seems an eon, but of course it is only the tiniest of quicksteps in the march of time. Yet in those 22,000 or so days, so much has happened, been invented, improved upon, made new.
Consider that six decades ago there were no motorways here, no Tupperware, no double glazing and no me. Éamon de Valera was taoiseach, Prize Bonds were introduced and a young man called Cliff Richard released his first single.
As Which? reports in its celebration of 60 Products That Changed Our Lives, it was also the start of an era that would shepherd in exciting appliances designed to take the time and effort out of chores.
Little things that were actually big things, such as plug-in toasters (1958) and electric kettles that switched themselves off (1960). They meant housewives no longer had to supervise boiling water or attend to slices under a grill — which left them free to do other things, such as the laundry.
The laundry! Automatic washing machines were available in the 1960s but still too expensive for most households (the equivalent of €2,600 today). At the risk of sounding like a scullery under-maid, I can remember when laundry was a bicep-busting chore that lasted all day and involved a washing board, a twin-tub machine and evil-looking laundry tongs.
Sopping wet clothes had to be lifted out of the tub and into a mangle, then loaded back into the spinner. Once a rubber lattice had been placed on top and the beast was switched on, the house would reverberate as if a jet flypast and an earthquake were taking place simultaneously.
TODAY, I bless my strong and silent Bosch as it swishes through every load. Ditto my dishwasher, which I think I love more than my lover. For me, it is up there with the computer and Netflix as a godsend and a life-changer.
Oh, my absolutely lovely scrub-a-dubbley machines! Our relationship is almost romantic, such is my fondness for their reliability and unstinting capacity for hard work.
Apart from those big boys, I fondly like to imagine I lead an admirably low-tech life. No tumble dryer (1959), no microwave (1974), no freezer (1963), no iPod (2001), no iPad (2010), no Kindle (2009) and no fancy food processer or prep machine (1962) except a tiny Magimix Le Micro Mini Chopper that is currently broken.
Yet it is all a delusion, of course. My life is absolutely cushioned with sophisticated gadgetry and paved with First World conveniences, most of them sourced though my iPhone.
Smartphones arrived in 2007 but, late to the party, I didn’t get my mitts on one until 2014 — and since then I have never let it go. It changed everything — Smartphones allow consumers access to information to order books, plan a journey, take photos, shop. They set us free.
Obviously you know all this already, but I still marvel at it every day — it’s got an inbuilt torch! — and only wish smartphones had been invented before I needed spectacles to read the tiny print.
And as a journalist, what would I do without my laptop (1992), which liberated us from the office. Now we can work on trains, planes, at home, in hotels and even — if you get the sunshade just right and don’t tell the boss — by the pool.
Finally, a whizz back to the domestic front to celebrate the bagless vacuum cleaner (1993). Yes, here I go again, but I can remember when those rattle-and-roll manual sweepers were kingpin in the cleaning cupboard. And all they did was make your carpet prematurely bald. Now you just glide over the surfaces, propelling the slimmest of suckers in front of you, a bit like being a pro dancer on Strictly.
So there you have it. A life free of fluff, grime, manual typewriters and baked-on grease. We live in the luckiest of high-tech times. We should appreciate it more.
1958: STEAM IRON
Hoover Steam or Dry Iron. Few now recall lugging solid irons heated on hobs, or even gas irons with rubber hoses.
1958: TOASTER
Morphy Richards automatic pop-up toaster. Previous toasters did one side of the bread only, and you had to watch them like a hawk to stop it burning.
1959: TUMBLE DRYER
Parnall Auto-dry. Costly — €1,080 in today’s money — but no more waiting for good weather to hang clothes out on a line.
1959: MINI
BMC Morris Mini-Minor, brilliantly using an engine turned sideways to drive the front wheels, freeing up interior space and nippy, too. Changed cars for ever.
1960: ELECTRIC KETTLE
The Russell Hobbs K2, one of the first kettles to turn off automatically, a boon for a busy, but tea-mad, nation.
1960: AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINE
English Electric Liberator, costing €2,600 in today’s money. But it ended standing over a machine operating the controls, or using a washboard.
1961: TUPPERWARE
Tupperware parties started. Sandwiches — and neighbours’ invitations — were never quite the same again.
1961: THE ‘PILL’
Helped to unleash the sexual revolution of the Swinging Sixties by making free love possible, although it wasn’t available in Ireland until 1979.
1962: VELCRO
Inspired by burdock seeds, which use tiny hooks to attach to passing animals.
1962: KENWOOD CHEF A701A
A firm started by Kenneth Wood invented the mixer and used the slogan ‘The Chef does everything but cook — that’s what wives are for!’ This was their best model yet.
1963: PARACETAMOL
New over-the-counter painkiller and first alternative to aspirin.
1963: CINE CAMERA
Kodak Brownie 8mm. You had to wind it up, but it meant home movies for millions, long before video.
1963: FRIDGE FREEZER
Tricity Supercold TR661. For the first time it was possible to keep food for months without canning, drying or pickling it.
1964: FLYMO LAWNMOWER
Inspired by the hovercraft, it floated above the grass and was almost effortless to push. No neat stripes, and you had to rake up the grass clippings.
1965: DISHWASHER
Colston Mk4: First Which? ‘Best Buy’ because it washed all the dishes well. But early models were noisy — you couldn’t stay in the kitchen and chat!
1965: CAMERA
Polaroid Swinger: Much loved because for the first time people could see snaps without sending them off to the chemist.
1967: COLOUR TV
The Decca CTV 25 would have cost the equivalent of €5,300 today. TV suddenly became so much more realistic.
1970: SUITCASE
Bernard Sadow wheeled suitcase. Such models were at first considered ‘unmasculine’ because a real man should hulk his bags himself. An estimated 380,000 people in Ireland wear contact lenses. No more ugly specs, and you could soon change your eye colour, too.
1972: POCKET CALCULATOR
Sinclair Executive. Launch price was the
1971: SOFT CONTACT LENSES
equivalentToday,have pointless. made mobileof these €1,100 phones covetedin today’sand gizmos computersmoney. 1972: Floppyone pop disks. DATA song. A STORAGEThey whole kept one evolving, couldn’t so store you’d 1973: be DOUBLEhard put GLAZINGto use one today. Aluminium at first, white plastic later. 1974:AEG Micromat MICROWAVEML 7.60. Responsible for the modern addiction to ready meals. 1978:The JVC VIDEOHR-3300 cost RECORDERS€3,130 in today’s money.book and Tapes couldn’t were storeas big a as wholea hardbackfilm. 1980: WALKMAN The sold Sony200 million Walkman worldwide. cassette tape player 1980: PACKAGED SANDWICHES The lunch pre-packedon the go. sandwich revolutionsied 1981: COMPUTER Acorn BBC Micro. Great games. 1981: SAFER CARS The Mercedes-Benz S-Class set a new standard for passenger safety — with airbags and anti-lock brakes. 1982: AUDIO CD PLAYER First commercial CD player Sony CDP101 launched in Japan. Killed off vinyl LPs, later killed off itself by iPods and downloads. 1984: APPLE MAC Pioneered the computer mouse. 1985: SMOKE ALARM Saved more lives than we’ll ever know. 1986: DIGITAL CAMERA Early models held only six pictures. 1987: MOBILE PHONE Nokia Mobira Cityman 1320 weighed the same as iPhone 7s. Did 50 minutes’ talk. 1987: AERTEL A very slow information system on TV. Many will remember weekends spent in front of a stalled screen — waiting for the latest football scores to flash up. 1988: PRINTER HP Printjet took a whole minute to print a single page, but so much better than the daisywheel dot matrix ones before. 1988: COMBI BOILER The Glow-worm Hotwater Express meant no more waiting for water to heat up to have a bath. 1990: GAMES SYSTEM The Nintendo Game Boy gave rise to the ‘Tetris Effect’ — where users had hallucinations of slotting bricks after playing for hours. 1991: BATTERY The lithium-ion battery made lighter rechargeable gadgets possible. 1992: LAPTOP The IBM 300 ThinkPad weighed 6kg. 1993: Windowspictures complex1993:The 1995: Dyson COMPUTINGBAGLESSGAMESand demands3.1 DCO1 meanticons, ditched SYSTEMon VACUUMratherusers the the SYSTEMcould keyboard.thanbag. click typing on in The worldwide,1997:The electric-hybridToyota PlayStation TOYOTAPrius addictingcar 1 was sold PRIUSthat the 100 a drivers generation.pioneeringmillion found ‘eerie’ 1997:Britax system and because CHILDso you VW no devisedof CARits longer silence. SEATthe had Isofix FIXINGto buy fixinga new 1998:Buyers childof DVDthe seat Panasonic PLAYERfor different DVD-A350 cars. could watchAnd 1999:A Funeral,a NOKIAfew films, and MOBILEsuch Philadephia.as Four PHONE Weddings The 2000: Nokia BROADBAND3210 sold 160 million. Put online an and end makingto choosinga telephone between call. going 2001:The Apple iPOD iPod made your whole music collection portable. 2002:The Nokia CAMERA7650 made PHONEtrillions of selfies and silly videos inevitable. 2002:The BlackBerry MOBILE let EMAILSus check emails on the go. Cumbersome keyboard. 2004:The TomTom SATNAV spread US Department of Defense GPS technology to many. 2006: MUSIC STREAMING Spotify millions gaveof tracks music-loversfor free. access to 2006: LCD HIGH-DEFINITION TV: High-definitionin 2006. Tellies wereTV channelsgoing flat. arrived on Sky 2007: SMARTPHONE The Apple iPhone brought a computer to the palm of our hands. One billion have been sold worldwide. 2007: TV ONLINE Services such as Netflix let you watch what you want, when you want (when the broadband was up to it). 2009: FITNESS TRACKER FITBIT More than 100 million wearable fitness devices are sold annually. 2009: eREADERS Debut of the Amazon Kindle, but nine years before Stephen King’s Riding The Bullet debuted online and sold 400,000 copies in 24 hours. 2010: COMPUTER TABLET At just 13mm thick, Apple’s iPad weighed less than a loaf of bread. 2015: LIGHT BULB For the first time LED bulbs could emit as much light as a 100W incandescent bulb. 2016: SMART HUB The Amazon Echo answers your questions, plays music and reports the news — and is perhaps a forerunner of artificial intelligence in the home.