[HN Gopher] The 1950s miracle kitchen of the future
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The 1950s miracle kitchen of the future
Author : redshirt
Score : 29 points
Date : 2022-04-21 12:15 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (indyweek.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (indyweek.com)
| rasz wrote:
| How about Monsanto's Plastic "Home of the Future" at Disneyland
| (1957) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NQ5OlY40bA
| Tagbert wrote:
| I remember seeing that at Disneyland. I was fascinated and
| excited for the future in those days.
| userbinator wrote:
| That robotic vacuum cleaner certainly has the mid-century look.
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| It's interesting to me that most people, even when renovating
| their kitchen in a home they never intend to sell, don't bother
| adjusting the counter heights to that most compatible with the
| user.
|
| Multiple heights are appearing in more designs now.
| c22 wrote:
| I put our counters on motorized standing desk hardware. My
| wife's ideal height and my own are no where near compatible so
| now we can just hit our individual preset button.
|
| Plumbing the sink was the trickiest part.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| This sounds a really need idea, I can't really imagine how
| this would look/work in reality though, especially when you
| are cooking together
| bombcar wrote:
| I surmise it'd look like a slow-motion version of an
| equalizer light diagram!
|
| (It practicality each would likely pick the appropriate
| counter to set to a height).
| reportingsjr wrote:
| Whoa, can you provide pictures/video of this? Getting this to
| look nice would be a lot of work!
| pinot wrote:
| I need to see this
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _" whether you're tiny, typical or tall."_
|
| I love the alliteration here in place of _short, average, tall._
|
| _Dad is proud of this letter, the one that told him he was too
| innovative, even for the most Jetsons-like of dream kitchens._
|
| I think that's a cool thing to be proud of. I also wish we would
| kind of go in the opposite direction and find solutions that work
| well for most people while being simpler and having fewer moving
| parts, a la modern faucet design that handles both hot and cold
| with one handle.
| userbinator wrote:
| _modern faucet design that handles both hot and cold with one
| handle._
|
| That's "modern" as in "late 40s"?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_M._Moen
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| Arguably the single faucet design has positives and negatives -
| it is easier to use (if designed right) but it also has a much
| more complicated "cartridge" vs a simple rubber washer.
| phnofive wrote:
| This exact line caught my attention as well - despite the
| author's attempts to mock the copywriter's optimism, they could
| sure turn a phrase.
| bxparks wrote:
| This Miracle Kitchen would be my Kitchen-from-Hell. Every
| unnecessary moving part is something that needs to be maintained,
| and is something that will eventually break and will need to be
| repaired or replaced.
|
| When I moved into my current house, I found many screws holding
| the hinges of the kitchen cabinet doors were loose and needed to
| be tightened. One hinge had become completely disconnected
| because its screws had stripped from the side board. The previous
| owners had not performed the most basic maintenance of just
| tightening some screws. I suspect that a motorized cupboard with
| motors, gears, rails, and rollers would be a maintenance
| nightmare. A sink that moves up and down means plumbing pipes
| that move, which gives me images of water leaking slowly behind
| the cabinet and destroying the subfloor.
| bombcar wrote:
| You see a lot of this in home design - because the people who
| pay for it often have moved on by the time it begins failing
| (or it's cheaper to install).
|
| Cabinet hinges come in "non-adjustable" varieties which are
| much more durable and can support significantly more weight,
| but they're also harder to install.
|
| As for a moving sink you could have it be like a commercial
| sink "behind the scenes" - just dump straight into a sump
| (usually called a "floor sink"):
| https://www.webstaurantstore.com/regency-22-16-gauge-stainle...
|
| People likely don't want that, however, even if you could make
| the entire kitchen flood proof.
| kkfx wrote:
| Likely, but not necessarily: take a look at an ICE car: it's
| mechanical complexity is undoubtedly higher, it also operate
| normally under more environmental stress and for much longer
| time, however it's mostly very reliable compared to countless
| others "appliances" we have.
|
| The issue is the actual social model: we produce goods to sell
| them, not much to fulfill a purpose, we do buy goods with a
| use-and-dispose mindset not asking for "investments in
| $appliance", the whole house is seen as an investments, but
| it's content normally is considered a kind of commodity nearly
| no one care about and the result is cheap prices in absolute
| terms, far expensive in relative terms (for what they are) and
| overall very low quality. But that's not a tech issue, it's
| mostly a social issue.
|
| If we start seeing a furnished "houseplace" [1] as an asset not
| as a commodity things might change. In that case
| equipment/appliances are not just something I drop there of the
| shelves of a nearby vendor but something valuable I use,
| profiting from it, then I ask for reliable and maintainable
| stuff not for the cheapest because they are all the same crap
| so better pay less, it's overpriced anyway...
|
| A slow moving sink for instance it's not much an issue: in the
| past and for decades, at least in Europe we used flexible
| anyway to connect sink, bidet, etc, those are a rubber tube
| surrounded by a traced inox "tissue" with flanges on both side,
| sometimes with a rubber joint sometimes with a built-in PTFE
| permanent semi-conic joint and rarely something in between. The
| are the same conceptually of those used in cars and planes for
| hydraulic (for instance for breaks), very reliable, sometimes
| more than rigid ones. Also you can achieve the same result with
| a moving footboard under the sink able even to lift a child or
| an adult if needed, again it's the same principle of trucks
| rear hydraulic tailgate, witch is actually very reliable. The
| issue is the overall cost and so how people value things and
| how they consider them useful or not.
|
| Think about an hypothetical humans society that instead of
| investing gazillion of resources to build roads/roads infra
| (like bridge, tunnels etc) have decide to go for drones-alike
| flying transports as "we" have discovered the first usable
| chopper. Now such society might have left old roads to nature,
| still usable for some purposes but unmaintained not wasting
| gazillion of oil and crushed rocks with the industry behind to
| entertain them, gazillion of resources for bridges etc
| investing in light aluminum-plastic drones able to fly at the
| same price of an actual real car (we already have them, in tech
| terms and since a bit of time). City/civil panorama will be
| much different but in substantial terms much of actual
| "nightmares" (collapsing bridges, landslides, bad winter
| treatments on roads, ...) would be substituted by other
| "nightmares" but with a similar level of sustainability. Again
| that's in theory is much more a social issue than a tech one:
| we have developed a certain society around certain tech but
| that not means it's the only one possible at the same level of
| comfort and needs. Nor that's the best we can achieve.
|
| The biggest social issue is that most people and elites are
| with them are reactionary so fear the REAL change preferring a
| dummy change of anything to not change anything for real. In
| the end, after decades, something still going through, often in
| bad ways, just see actual IT compared to historic Xerox vision.
| Very few want to change such behavior but so far in the history
| they fails, almost all the time...
|
| [1] I can't find the right term in English, a room equipped for
| a specif purpose like a workspace...
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I love the quotes from Khrushchev, who was clearly not naive. A
| kitchen race to match the space race!
| euroderf wrote:
| Ma & Pa Kettle had their run-in with the home of the future.
| aaron695 wrote:
| I would say a big reason air fryers have become so successful is
| you don't have to bend down like an oven to use or clean.
|
| Air fryers are a good example of a post-internet kitchen change.
|
| There's nothing obviously logical about air fryers in a lot of
| houses. I'll use mine over my far more advanced, self cleaning
| oven whenever I can.
|
| Looking after your back is also big in this kitchen, which is
| interesting. But in the end it wasn't at the project stage for
| ovens, it seems it was a modular device end users could buy.
| pixl97 wrote:
| In most houses the oven takes much more time in relation to the
| amount of food cooked. When I'm cooking for 2, the air dryer
| gets used heavily. When I'm cooking for the full family it's
| the oven.
|
| This would also correspond with the decrease in average family
| size over time.
| graftak wrote:
| Where I'm from most people have built-in ovens where the bottom
| is just above counter top height, making it way more convenient
| to deal with.
|
| The vogue thing now is to even have dishwashers in high
| cabinets so they can be placed at a more ergonomic height.
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