The House the 50s Built - the inventions

21 May 2012

Engineer Brendan Walker investigates the inventions and innovations that came to the fore in the 1950s and changed British home life forever.  Below is a list of some featured in the series including those - marked with an asterisk- that Brendan, together with scientist Marty Jopson, attempt to recreate to understand the ground-breaking science behind them.

 

Programme 1: The Kitchen

At the beginning of the 50s, women were spending approximately 70 hours a week on housework, with the hardest work in the kitchen. But a succession of technological breakthroughs and a slew of labour-saving devices changed all that. Women began to have more free time, allowing them to broaden their horizons - the feminism of the 60s had its roots in the kitchen revolution of the 50s.

 

Formica *

The fitted kitchen was the must-have of the 50s. It made the room less cluttered, more efficient and, thanks to the presence of Formica worktops, a more colourful place to be.  Formica is made up of layers of paper and plastic, heated under pressure to form a thin laminate that can be used as a door covering or worktop surface. It started life as an electrical insulator in 1913 but it took another two decades to be used as a furniture covering.  Early versions were made with formaldehyde and urea - the same chemical found in urine - but it wasn't very resistant and tended to yellow slightly after heating.  In 1949,Formica introduced a new colour range made by soaking coloured or patterned paper in a mixture of formaldehyde and melamine which is then heated and subjected to extreme pressure.  The resulting hard plastic is water, scratch and stain resistant, but most importantly, completely clear, allowing the paper to show though, bringing colour and hygiene to the kitchen.

 

Blast freezing (frozen chicken) *

Supermarkets started their long journey to high street dominance in the 50s, with frozen chicken a central part of their strategy.  But the key to a properly frozen piece of food is to do it quickly, this prevents large ice crystals developing, destroying cell walls and turning food to mush- a fact discovered by Clarence Birdseye in the early 1900s. Early fast freezing methods favoured ‘flat' foods such as fish but the development of blast freezers allowed foods like chicken to be given the same treatment. With supermarkets able to control their supply of birds, prices dropped and sales of chicken jumped from1 million a year in 1950 to 150 million a year by the mid-1960s.

 

Kenwood mixer

In 1950, an engineer called Kenneth Wood launched the Kenwood Chef at the Ideal Home Exhibition, heralding a new era of easy-to-use, labour-saving devices.  When it went on sale in Harrods it sold out within a week.  Soon women everywhere wanted one and the Chef shot to the top of wedding present lists.  Within six years Kenwood's staff had grown from 20 to 400, its turnover was £1.5m and the product range included hand-mixers and liquidisers too.  In the process, Wood became one of Britain's youngest millionaires.  Its success was due in part to Wood's canny eye for design; his motto, "eye appeal is buy appeal," increased his products' desirability.

 

Non stick pan (PTFE) *

Teflon or PTFE is the most effective non-stick substance known to man and the only thing a gecko can't stick to (a useful fact if you're trying to make your own non stick pan).The story that Teflon was a by product of the space race is an urban myth- PTFE was discovered by accident in 1938 by Roy J Plunkett - a scientist who was trying to find safer refrigeration gases.

But it wasn't until 1954 that Frenchman Marc Gregoire found a way to stick it to aluminium, when he used it to lubricate his fishing gear.  By dipping the fishing gear in acid, he made tiny pores in the surface of the aluminium which the PTFE could then cling to.  His wife persuaded him to coat her cooking pans in the same way and by 1956 they had founded the Tefal Corporation, selling over 100 pans a day and over a billion by the present day, developing their own version of PTFE along the way.

 

Episode 2: The Living Room

The early 1950s living room was a depressing place with walls painted in dark colours, old furniture inherited from relatives and sofas stuffed with horsehair. But the Festival of Britain heralded a new decade of design and invention, showing the British family that a colourful future was just around the corner.  By the end of the decade, colour and designer living wasn't just for the rich - it was for everyone, thanks in no small part to the petrochemical industry.

 

Vinyl paint *

The fractional distillation of crude oil gave scientists a whole range of new products that would change home design forever, including what we paint our rooms with.  PVA glue - poly vinyl acetate - is the basis for vinyl emulsion paint.  The glue contains a polymer that creates a smooth, washable surface, helps it stick to walls and replaces the dangerously combustible linseed oil-based paints and the toxic lead-based paints used previously.  When wartime paint rationing came to an end, painting your home became popular in the 1950s as paint manufacturers increasingly marketed paint for the DIY market.

 

Wallpaper paste

Made from flour and water until the 1950s, homemade wallpaper paste was messy and unpredictable.  In 1953 the first synthetic wallpaper paste was launched under the name Polycell. Made from methyl cellulose - an organic compound -this tasteless, non-toxic paste is also good for constipation, though not to be recommended. Its mass production would also help lead to the rise of the ‘feature wall' in the home, as people bought the new atomic and molecular wallpaper designs that  were first showcased at the Festival of Britain in 1951.

 

Polyurethene foam (for sofa cushions)*

This clean and cheap synthetic foam transformed the furniture industry and replaced the unhygienic horsehair and straw used in pre-war sofas. It's made by mixing two groups of chemicals, a type of alcohol and a chemical derived from crude oil. When mixed, CO2 is released as tiny bubbles, causing the liquid to foam up. At the same time they turn into a plastic polymer creating a mesh that traps the air bubbles inside.The stuffing for upholstery was now lighter, less bulky and could be moulded into any number of shapes.

 

Pressure moulded wooden furniture *

Before the 50s, wooden chairs were made from separate pieces of solid wood, carved and joined together by expert furniture makers. But with the invention of PVA glues, and a technique first used during the Second World War to build the Mosquito fighter-bomber, it became possible to take thin sheets of wood, glue them together, and then mould them with a press into different shapes. The first single-piece pressure moulded veneer object was the Ant Chair, designed in 1952 by Arne Jacobsen.

 

Episode 3 - The Bedrooms

The Invention of Individualism and the Birth of the Teenager

Five years after the end of the war and the majority of people in Britain were still wearing a uniform of sorts - but now it was drab suits and dresses. Even teenagers dressed as ‘mini-me's of their parents. But a whole host of new materials heralded a colourful decade where people began to dress how they wanted, not how they had to.  The teenager was the ultimate expression of individuality.  We trace how inventions changed fashion, beauty and make-up forever.

 

Nylon (for clothes, hosiery  and underwear) *

Awar time invention,nylon was first synthesised in 1935 by Wallace Carathers at DuPont Labs in America,and developed as a replacement for the silk used in parachutes.After the war, nylon was then used for hosiery, and when the first nylon stockings hit UK shelves in 1950, women rushed to buy them, withspace age names like Orlon, Terylene and Crimplene. Replacing silk, which was pricey and in short supply, the nylon tights could be easily coloured and had elastic properties not found in organic materials. Next came polyester, first made into thread in 1952. Intended as a replacement for wool, polyester suit salesmen would jump, fully clothed, into swimming pools to show off the quick-dry properties of this new wonder-fibre.

 

Lacquer hairspray*

The first aerosol was patented in 1943 and used by the Americans during the Second World War as insect repellent to defend against malaria.  In 1950, the technology was picked up by the cosmetics industry and used to disperse hairspray lacquer in a fine mist - without which, the iconic beehive hair-do would never have been possible. The first hairsprays used shellac (the secretions of a female lac bug, scraped from trees in the forests of India and Thailand) dissolved in pure alcohol.  But the high alcohol content made the hair spray extremely flammable, and with smoking as popular as ever, hairspray was the cause of many accidents.  Later hairsprays used polyvinylpyrrolidone, a product of the petrochemical industry, which is water soluble and much easier to wash out.

 

Vinyl records (LP and '45) *

The first Vinyl record was launched in 1931 although they didn't become widespread until the end of the 50s. Before then most records had been made from shellac, the secretions of a female lac bug, scraped from trees in the forests of India and Thailand. But shellac records were very brittle and could only hold about 5 minutes of music on each side, and during the war, shellac was in short supply.  Vinyl was made from polyvinyl chloride, a product of the petrochemical industry, and the long molecules made it flexible, mouldable and more resistant to breaking.  It was also possible to make tighter grooves, allowing for up to 15 minutes on each side.  By the end of the 50s shellac records had been completely phased out.

 

Transistors

One of the most significant inventions of all time, the transistor amplifies or modifies an electric signal and is an essential part of almost any electronic device.  This job of amplifying or modifying an electric signal was first achieved in 1907 with the invention of the thermionic triode or ‘vacuum tube', but they were big and expensive and, like light bulbs, needed regular replacement.  The first solid state transistor was invented in 1947 and the transistor radio - the Regency TR-1 - went on sale in 1954.  It was the first radio you could take anywhere.  Over the decades, transistors have got smaller and smaller, and are now tiny devices in our electronics. To put it in perspective, if iPhones still relied on vacuum tubes for their computing power, they would have to be 1000 miles wide. 

 

Electric guitar *

As beautiful as they sound, the trouble with acoustic guitars is that they're not very loud and can't compete with brass sections in big band orchestras. The first electrically amplified guitar appeared in 1931. Copper wire is wrapped around a strong magnet, and when you move a guitar string near the magnet, a tiny electrical charge is produced in the wire, and this can be connected to an amplifier and speaker.  Over the next two decades, the technology was refined, culminating in the 1954 Fender Stratocaster - arguably the most iconic guitar ever made used by Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and Eric Clapton.

 

Episode 4 - In the Garden and Garage

As we became more affluent in the 50s we began to think beyond the confines of our homes. Gardens were converted from their Dig for Victory drabness into multi-coloured outdoor living spaces, thanks in no small way to chemicals so poisonous they're now banned. We longed for the freedom to travel as motorbikes, cars and eventually jet airliners became more accessible to all. And at the root of many of these new found freedoms were military technologies and innovations created during the pressures of wartime.

 

Synthetic fertiliser - National Growmore was British *

Growing plants and vegetables need nitrate, potassium and phosphorus, butsoil doesn't always have enough. Traditionally, fertiliser was made using potato peel, egg shell, bones, manure and even blood and urine, but supply, convenience and the right amount of nutrients were not always guaranteed. With food in short supply during World War II the government introduced the Dig for Victory campaign and with it came National Growmore in 1942 - the first synthetic fertiliser with artificially produced nitrate, potassium and phosphorus in exact quantities and always to hand. Another breakthrough came in the 50s when the first slow release fertilisers were introduced by compacting the chemical mixture and combining it with clay.

 

Triumph Thunderbird motorbike British

In 1950, Triumph created a 650cc engine for a bike that became known as the Triumph Thunderbird and was the first superbike to reach 100mph. Famously ridden by Marlon Brando in his 1950 film "The Wild One", the engine was exactly the same as their earlier Triumph Speed Twin engine, but a simple increase in stroke length and bore diameter by just a few millimetres meant it had far more power.

 

Tanning lotion

Having a golden sun tan was the height of fashion in the 50s, but most Brits couldn't afford a foreign excursion and had to make do with the unpredictable British summer.  Scientists came to the rescue with the first self-tanner in 1959. Derived from sugar-beet, it contained the active ingredient DHA (Di-hydroxy-acetone) which reacts with enzymes in the skin to release a brown pigment.  Known as Man-Tan, it was originally marketed towards men and sold as an aftershave.  DHA still forms the basis of many self-tan lotions today.  According to St Tropez, a leading self-tan brand, 41% of women in the UK now use fake tan.

 

Tea bags

The fortuitous discovery of the teabag was made when American tea merchant, Thomas Sullivan, sent samples of his tea out in small, silk bags, which customers assumed were to go directly in the pot - a happy accident!  The key British contribution was cutting the string off the dunk-able American teabags. The string-free teabag was first introduced in the UK by Tetley in 1952. Today, 60.2 billion cups of tea are consumed every year in Britain, or 165 million cups a day - 96% of which are brewed using the humble teabag.

 

Instant (Freeze-dried) coffee *

Freeze-drying was first introduced in World War II as a way to preserve blood plasma and pharmaceuticals for injured soldiers on the battlefield.  During the late 40s and 50s this preservation method began to be applied to food and drink - including coffee. The freeze-drying process involves heating strong coffee into a foam and freezing it quickly. The frozen foam is then broken up and placed in a vacuum chamber where all the air is removed.  In a vacuum, water will change from solid ice to water vapour without ever passing through the liquid stage, making it possible to remove all the water whilst leaving the coffee's basic structure intact leading to a superior taste and aroma.

 

Jet engines (passenger jet planes) British *

The Comet, the first passenger jet airliner, was unveiled in 1950, with its maiden flight on 2 May 1952. Until then, propeller plane flights were slow, turbulent and inefficient - a journey from the East Midlands to Malaga could take as long as 36 hours - caused by a combination of slow airspeed and a constant need to refuel.  The genius of the jet engine is to use a turbine to draw air into an encased chamber.  The air is funnelled into a tighter space where it's compressed, mixed with kerosene, and ignited.  The exhaust exits through the back of the chamber and drives the aircraft forwards. As the gas exits, it also drives another turbine that's connected to the turbine at the front of the chamber to suck more air in and keep the engine going. Jet engines enabled many Britons to travel abroad for the first time and at much greater speeds. Today, a daily average of 1305 flights leave and arrive at Heathrow airport alone.

The House the 50s Built, presented by Professor Brendan Walker, starts in week 23 on Channel 4.