The ’ 20 may have been yawl for well - heeled urban center , but on the farm ? Rural electricity in the 1920s was as rare as Google Fiber is today . Which make water these 1922 predictions for the farm of the future so brazen .
Last week , you may have ensure thisawesome 1921 mapfrom theStar Tribunearchives . It picture which states in the U.S. had the most family users of electrical energy , with place like New York and Illinois visually swollen to stand for their large ( newly electrified ) urban population .
https://gizmodo.com/a-map-of-which-state-had-the-most-electricity-in-1921-510778946
The previous yr , in 1920 , the U.S. Census found for the first time in its history that America was absolute majority urban . Which is to say that America now had over 50 percent of its population living in cities rather than rural communities .
In 1920 , just 35 percent of American households had electrical energy . By 1929 , nearly 68 percentage of American homes were electrified . But , if you do n’t count farms , about 85 percentage of Americans had electricity by the end of the 1920s .
And there ’s the snag . Rural communities , including farms , were far slow in assume electricity than the quietus of the country . Of the roughly 6.3 million American farms in 1922 , only about 3 % had electricity . It was n’t until 1935 that the U.S. government come up to this huge rural vs urban electric watershed with the constitution of the Rural Electrification Administration .
But in 1922 ( when so few rural places had electricity ) , Science and Invention magazine featured their vision of the farm of tomorrow — the Electric Farm de Luxe !
The farm of the future is in many ways trying to reflect the rapid acceptation of technical school at the metre , find in the first place in large American cities . People in urban area could n’t get enough of the latest electrified gadgets , including electric lamp , dishwashing machines and this amazing new excogitation scream the wireless telephone - or radio , as we call it today . And fuel by a boomtime economy and well-to-do credit ( something that would come back to haunt the land at the end of the 1920s ) these sleek forward-looking twist were spreading like wildfire . They were just dim to find their style to the farm .
According to the magazine publisher , the farm house of the futurity has forward-looking comforts like electric infrigidation . To put in perspective just how futuristic this idea was , only 8 per centum of American home ( both rural and urban ) had a mechanically skillful icebox in 1930 — eight years after this illustration was bring out ! Electric refrigeration was virtually nonexistent at the kickoff of the 1920s .
And do n’t get me start on automatic water pumps for run water . They were downright ostentatious , according to Science and Invention :
These include the usual kitchen and living room appurtenances , such as galvanising clothes washing machine , lights , fans , food for thought chop , dish automatic washer , sad Fe , mesa cooking utensils , such as chafing dish , coffee bean percolator , toaster , etc . In the more ostentatious electric farmhouse , we often find an robotic galvanising H2O - heart and storage tank car system of rules , using press air travel to draw the water up thru the various room with one or more bathrooms , as well as an galvanic icebox in the kitchen , a small motor work sporadically and mechanically as expect , a pump link with an ethyl - chloride circulating and distill arrangement for the infrigidation in motion .
The farm of the future also had an galvanizing incubator . What ’s interesting to mark is that innovative chicken husbandry techniques that we see on the schematic farm of today would n’t become popular until the previous 1930s , so this farm of the future still had chickens peck about in what today we might call “ costless range ” conditions .
Raising chickens in the futurity would be automate , the magazine promise , with increased photograph to artificial luminousness being crucial to their development .
One of the most important thing that electricity has done for chicken raising is the lengthening of the short wintertime daytime , by lighting the hennery up to about 9.00 o’clock at dark . The simple way to arrange for the twinkle to flash on at sundown and cut them off at the want 60 minutes , is by means of an galvanising metre alternate , several signifier of which are useable from electric catching and supply houses .
Having electrical energy on a farm often meant providing it yourself . Science and Invention explain that there were a few option for convey that electrical energy onto that farm of the hereafter :
A farmer who wishes to electrify on a lowly scale , can do so in one of several slipway , and at a reasonable price at that . He has the coice of at least three try and proved method of generating his own electric current , viz . 1 — by using a water steering wheel or turbine to motor the dynamo ; 2 — by utilizing a wind - mill driven dynamo ; 3 — by employing a gasoline locomotive engine driven dynamo .
Just two years later , a sister publication of Science and Invention called Practical Electrics would boast command on how to make your own power plant in a stream on your property .
From the October 1924 cover of Practical Electrics :
Cutting down trees as well as constitute and cultivate crops were all jobs that would benefit from the electrification of the American farm .
But it was the automation of milk that seemed to show the most promise for the electric farm of tomorrow .
From the magazine :
“ Miss Electricity ” is Queen of all she surveys in many advanced dairies , specially those of large sizing . Here we line up electrical motor - driven cream extractor , bottle washing and meet machines , butter churns , electrical egg candlers , for testing the tone of egg ( altho these devices are sometimes placed in an egg sort out and backpacking elbow room tie tot he hennery ) . An galvanic icing simple machine for the dairy is hard-nosed , and no doubt , when electrical energy become more well - known on our farms , this feature film will be utilized to a very considerable extent , as the cost of ice when it has to be purchased , has been increasing each year .
Despite all the hope of Science and Invention , electricity was indeed very slow to reach the farm — even during the boom economy of the 1920s . By the terminal of the 1930 , electricity found its way to only about 10 pct of American farms . And while galvanic tractor powered by nearby stream may have never become a uncouth sight , the electrification of the American farm no doubt contributed to tremendous growth and increase crop take during World War II .
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