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It’s easy to forget that so many of the most basic conveniences of modern life are, well… modern. ...And we’re not talking about cutting edge tech like Peloton bikes and smartphones. Some things you’ve used every day of your life haven’t been around that much longer than you have!
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It can be easy to forget that so many of the most basic conveniences of modern life are, well, modern
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And we're not talking about cutting-edge tech like Peloton bikes and smartphones
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Some things you've used every day of your life haven't been around that much longer than you have
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So, today, we're going to look at everyday inventions that are newer than you think
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It's hard to imagine there was a time when people didn't have sofas
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and we suspect it was much like living in hell, where they don't have chairs
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The French had sofas as early as the 1600s, but those were really more for laying on
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The first example of something we might recognize as a sofa was the Chesterfield
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a design which is still in use. It was created in the 1700s by Lord Chesterfield
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a nobleman who was tired of standing up all the time, and yearned for a piece of furniture with his own name on it
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But the alternative would require a place where the elite could sit, while retaining their dignity, and such a thing did not exist
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So, he invented it. The Chesterfield was a hit with the British upper class
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However, most average people wouldn't start having them in their home until the Victorian era
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and even then, it wasn't like everyone had one. The rise of the sofa's popularity really coincided with the explosive growth of radio and television
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at the beginning of the 20th century, which both gave people more of a reason to sit idly in their living rooms
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By the end of World War II, most homes in the West were being built around a central living room
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dominated by a sofa and a television. Until surprisingly recently, if you wanted to drive across the United States
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states, you had to be ready to navigate some truly awful local roads. It actually wasn't until 1956
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that the plan to build the highway system was even put in place. The Federal Aid Highway Act of 56
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set out a plan for over 40,000 miles of high-capacity interstate roads. The goal was to
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eliminate unsafe and inefficient routes to ensure speedy cross-country travel across the country
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It was an ambitious goal, but they weren't just doing it to make road tripping a little easier
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It was about making population centers across the U.S. easier to evacuate in the event of a nuclear attack
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The interstate highway system wasn't fully declared complete until 1992, and yet, somehow, it's still always under construction
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In medieval times, the historical era, not the theme restaurant, But plates weren't commonly used, because if you weren't rich, the vast majority of your meals came in the form of soups, stews, and porridges, which don't do so well on flat surfaces
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When the average person needed something more like a plate, they used a trencher, which is a tray made from old stale bread
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It could then be eaten after the meal or if you were in a generous mood given away to a starving person The upper classes ate their meals from plates platters and bowls made of pewter but pewter often contains lead so their dinnerware was also poisoning them Just a little bit for
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flavor. Then, in the 1600s and 1700s, European nobility became obsessed with eastern ceramic
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and porcelain dinnerware, which they called fine china. Owning a full set of ceramics was the dream
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but it was also very expensive, so very few could maintain it
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However, the ceramics industry was industrialized during the Victorian age, and by the 1900s, nearly every person in the UK and the US was eating their meals from ceramic plates
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If you've ever read Shakespeare, stop. The Bard of Avon would have hated that idea
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He wanted you to watch his plays. In his time, pretty much no one read them, apart from the actors
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In fact, when it came to storytelling, pretty much no one read anything back then
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At that time, nearly all entertainment was designed to be performed and enjoyed communally
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on a stage or at an event, rather than alone in private. Much like how we enjoy films today, most entertainment, going back to ancient times, required no reading
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So, what changed? Well, for most of history, books were largely non-fiction
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They served as references or guides for a scholarly elite who could afford an education and had the money to buy them
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The birth of the novel largely coincided with the spread of literacy among common people
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which is to say once everyone could read, publishers saw an opportunity
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and a new market in personal entertainment began to emerge. The first novels of the 1700s walked a fine line between fiction and non
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Most posed as the biographies of real people with sensational stories, such as Robinson Crusoe and
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Maul Flanders. The novel as we know it today emerged mainly in the 1800s. One of the first
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to gain widespread popularity was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, published in 1812
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and they hadn't even seen Colin Firth play Mr. Darcy yet. Picnics have a quaint old world charm to them, although maybe not as old as you think
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They were a tradition brought to Britain in the late 1700s by exiled French nobles who'd been
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pushed out by the French Revolution. Not quite as wealthy as they once were
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they began jointly hosting parties to make them cheaper. One person would provide the venue
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and all the guests were expected to bring some food and a lot of booze to contribute to the buffet
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But that version of a picnic was usually an indoor party, often featuring amateur plays and raging deep into the night
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For reasons that are unclear, the picnic was adapted by the English middle classes in the early 1800s
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The country was right in the middle of the Romantic movement, which glorified nature
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So many of them took their parties outside to be closer to the natural world
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Both indoor and outdoor picnics existed side until the early 1900s at which time the outdoor picnic prevailed However they wouldn replace their raucous partying image with the sandwich and wicker basket we all tend to think of
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That idea of a picnic didn't fully emerge until the mid-20th century
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Back in the day, food shopping meant getting bread from the bakery, meat from the butcher
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fruit and vegetables from the green grocer, and cereals, canned goods, and everything else
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from the regular grocer. Nearly all these stores were run by individuals or families
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and had their own suppliers, prices, and customs. But shortly before the planet Krypton exploded
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a quick-thinking scientist launched a rocket ship to Earth containing the supermarket
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Uh, probably. The first supermarkets began to appear in the 1930s, but it took a while for the
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world to catch on, especially in Britain, where the first supermarket didn't open until 1948
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and even as late as 1950, only 35% of America's food was bought in supermarkets
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The retail world we know today finally came about in the 60s
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which saw the rise of gigantic stylish supermarkets finely tuned to draw in and keep customers under one roof
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In 2024, pretty much every home contains an oven, But through the medieval period and beyond, most individual households didn't have one
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Instead, they bought their cooked foods directly from the baker or paid a small amount to use the baker's oven themselves
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This was because ovens were big, heavy, and could be difficult to use
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especially within the relatively meager home of your average medieval Joe. Cast iron ovens began appearing in the 1700s, and during the Victorian age, they got smaller, more advanced, and cheaper
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It wasn't until the 1830s that the first compact iron ovens were commercially successful
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But even then, most people still did most of their cooking over a hearth
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The modern appliance as we know it, typically referred to as a range
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combining both an internal oven and a cooktop, really only started becoming common in the 1920s
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Backyards are the places where we host barbecues, sit on the patio, and hunt the backyard-igans. But until recently, the yards behind our homes
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weren't as much places for relaxing as they were places for doing your business. Yes, before indoor
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plumbing and bathrooms, most homes had an outhouse at the bottom of their yard. And prior to
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refrigeration, homeowners who didn't have a cold, dry cellar usually dug a root cellar in the yard
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to store fresh food, which was often homegrown because much of the rest of the yard was given
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over to garden space, or for woodwork, or keeping animals like chickens or dogs to supplement
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the household income. The idea of the backyard as a place for relaxation came after the postwar economic boom years
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of the 1950s and 60s. Advertisements and media began to portray the home as a place of respite from work and as society changed the backyard changed with it The truth is we been using forks in the West for hundreds of years
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as farming and gardening tools. In fact, until relatively recently, the idea of using a tiny
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little fork for eating food probably would have struck most people as a joke. From the medieval
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period and beyond, most people used a knife to eat their food. And it was the same knife they
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used for their other daily chores. Sort of like Rambo. He doesn't only use that knife to fight
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for freedom. Wealthier people sometimes had special spoons for feasting, but even in such
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situations, most guests brought their knives to the table. If they needed a second implement to
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handle the food, they just used their hands. And when the first forks finally dropped, early
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adopters were ridiculed. No, seriously. Religious writers of the period vilified forks as an example
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of unnecessary vanity and excess, suggesting that the desire to not touch food with your hands
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was prideful. Then, in the late 1500s, Catherine de' Medici introduced forks to the French royal
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court. And if you know anything about the Medicis, it's that they usually got their way
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They remained a tool of the elite for a long time, eventually entering common use in France
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in the 1750s and in Britain and beyond in the 1800s. If you're the type of person who finds it hard to get out of bed in the morning, you
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may have been born too late, because back in the day, they didn't have beds, so you
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would have been fine. As simple as they seem, beds actually haven't been around all that long
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Go back in time, say, to the medieval period, and they become almost unrecognizable
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If you were moderately wealthy, your family would own one very large bed
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which is a dream we've all had, but one that would be less glamorous in reality
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This bed, surrounded by posts and curtains, was usually big enough to host four or five people
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and could be used by the whole family at once. Oh boy
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The more well-off families would usually have separate beds for the children
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but the average person made their bed on the floor with fresh rushes
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a kind of leaf that was essentially used as disposable carpeting back then, and maybe a blanket
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This wasn't weird at the time, though. Sharing a sleeping space with others was the norm, unless you were extremely rich
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so the concept of privacy wasn't really a thing yet. The idea of separate bedrooms developed during the Renaissance
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though it wasn't really until the 1700s that they became entrenched in all classes of society
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Even then, it was common for up to six siblings to share a single bedroom, if not a single bed
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The idea of corner posts eventually fell out of fashion, and the first spring mattress was designed in the middle of the Victorian era
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Innerspring mattresses weren't common until the 1950s, and by that time, the minimalist bed frames of today had become fashionable
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and sleep has been a dream ever since