Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/23/westinghouses-1959-house-of.html
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Hello, Betty! I had no idea that you were a well-known advocate for consumers’ rights back in the day:
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This was meant for a family audience so they didn’t include the Westinghouse female pleasure machine
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THE HOUS OF DOOM!! Let me get back to you on this. Assuming I survive! HAHAHAhahhah!!
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LIVE BETTER. ELECTRICALLY.
I almost chortled until the irony of what I was looking at and typing on caught up with me.
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Note the prominently displayed balalaika – more evidence of Communist infiltration of 1950s America.
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Looks better than Buster Keaton’s electric house inn 1922. But in1959 there are so many gizmos that can break.
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I also shuddered at the almost-prescient front door camera: “Upon reaching the front door, a television camera takes a picture of your visitors and alerts you on a television monitor that they have arrived. Concurrently, Westinghouse’s Face-O-Matic computer will match your guests’ faces against a vast facial database containing those who have committed crimes against the state. Should a match occur, Westinghouse’s friendly robotic Officer Kuffs will be automatically dispatched.”
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Buttons! Valves! Shiny jet-age bentwood furniture! Dat ‘weather centre’… So much analogue goodness. I’m sold.
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Is it nuclear powered?
I think a 1959 Total Electric Home should be nuclear powered.
By its own nuclear pile in the basement.
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Did you miss the electric massage table?
Anyone else notice the boy packing heat? You probably thought it was a toy. Nope. The house of the future needs protection from roaming mutant hordes.
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Awesome. Needs a MST style work over.
Compared to our annual electricity usage, that must be about a 30,000 kWh house.
I wonder how noisy that all was. All day long there’d be motors humming as panel doors were slid in an out of position, the ticking of the electric heat ramping up, fans, servomotors, fluorescent light ballasts buzzing, bakelite switches going C-LACK!!
I love how the kitchen was called the food preparation center
The pride and joy of the man of the house is the weather control center
Like, he’s going to control the weather!
Oh god, I’m in tears. So good.
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But is she an electric Furness?
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General Atomics and Robco
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Yeah but… Back then, people would have gone apeshit if they even had a hint this would be used for surveillance purposes. As late as the early 70s Nixon proposed putting a small box on top of everyone’s TV set so the Dept. of Defense could alert people if necessary. (Ah, the good old Cold War days!) This was proposed as a one-way device, like a weather radio but people went ballistic comparing it to 1984. The proposal was dropped, as I recall, in a matter of days, if not hours.
Now, the sheep buy shit like Ring and Next and invite the gubmint to watch everything they do.
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Like that nightmare fuel snail being taken over by a parasitic worm?
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Really great read about the AC vs DC battle between Edison (team Direct Current) and the tag team of Tesla and Westinghouse (team Alternating Current).
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Oh to live in a neighborhood where every home has an active paint spray booth.
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“Kitchens” are sooooo 1955.
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