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The 1950s, we'd never had it so good. This was the start of a new Elizabeth and era, and it was also the first decade when Britain became recognizably modern. It gave us designs and inventions that are still at the heart of family life today. I'm Brendan Walker. I'm an experimental engineer and I want to celebrate the innovators that took us from the hardships of the 40s to the prosperity of the 60s. This is the story of how science transformed an exhausted country into a nation brimming with confidence. And it starts here in the home.
I'm taking a typical 1950s house and fast forwarding it through the decade, filling it full of the latest mods and finding out about the impact they had on all our lives. This home will reveal how a black and white Britain was transformed into a technical wonderland thanks to the house the 50s built. Welcome to 21 Coronation Close where we've recreated a typical postwar home. We're going to give it a complete 1950s makeover inspired by science and technology. Starting with the engine room of the house, the kitchen. So, this is what our kitchen and
millions of others in Britain looked like on the 1st of January 1950. Over here we've got our freestanding sink. Here we've got our ladder for keeping food fresh. Well, freshish. And over here we've got our mangle for doing the laundry. Yes. In 1950, a young woman starting out on married life would have inherited the same basic kitchen as her grandmother. But in just 10 short years, it would be transformed into this. A multicolored vision of the future full of the latest modcons. A room that changed so much it would have a profound effect on British family life. So what happened? To find out, I've got to go back to the start of the decade.
Now, as a man, I'd have barely set foot in the kitchen. So, to find out what really went on in there, I've invited round my neighbors, the local WI. How much time would you spend in the kitchen? A lot of time. Lots of times. Everything was cooked from scratch, wasn't it? Yes. You grew it in the garden, brought it in, but you just took it as normal cuz that was life, wasn't it? Had they got hot water though in that you've got two taps cold no hot you'd have bought a kettle b you wouldn't have had hot water
what do you think of our ladder that's very remember the little lace caps to go over the milk and the jam or the pickles whichever what kind of things would you keep in the no fridge or anything went in the ladder meat as well of You wouldn't have kept it for very long. So I mean shopping every day. Shop every Hard work. Shopping, cooking, and washing. That's it. In 1950, money was tight. Rationing was still the order of the day. And after the chaos of the Second World War, Britain sought comfort in the stability of family life. During the war, many women had taken on the work of men. But now it was back to playing the role of the beautiful housewife, the mother, the homemaker.
Everything took a lot of time. If you were going to keep your children healthy, fed, going to school, it would be a full day's work. My mother's diaries, which I took after she died were Monday wash the curtains, Tuesday turn mattress. My mother's life was keeping the house clean. I don't know how my mother managed with four children and with a very strict husband and the washing and the ironing and the mangling and the housework and the cooking it was killing. Housework dominated women's lives. The government's mass observation survey estimated that they did a 75hour week and the toughest work was reserved for
the kitchen. So, what was it about the kitchen which made life here so exhausting? Well, in 1952, the year the queen came to the throne, scientists at Cornell University tried to find out with a groundbreaking experiment. An experiment I'm going to recreate. And that is the fat pepper. The massive bag on my back captures all the air I breathe out. The harder I work, the faster it fills up. And so I can measure how much energy I'm using. It takes less than 15 minutes to fill the bag. I can work out that I've used up around 75 calories. In these 15 minutes, I've used the same amount of energy as if I'd been doing an aerobics class.
Whoops. Now, this same experiment in the 1950s made scientists realize that the kitchen layout was wrong. Very wrong. The Cornell study was reported in an article called a new kitchen built to fit your wife, which revealed that the workstations were at the wrong height and too far apart. Women were walking miles around the kitchen every week and used up perhaps twice as many calories as they do today. The solution was to combine everything into a single ergonomic energyefficient unit. This was when the idea of the fitted kitchen went mainstream. So, it's goodbye to my higgledy piggledy work units and hello to a streamline kitchen.
I'm going to use a new white clean material with the gloriously uninspiring name of high-pressure laminate. And a company called for mica was the first to spot its potential as a kitchen surface. I'm building a hall of fame to celebrate the innovators who imagined our future into being. And the first to get a place are the two electrical engineers behind for Michael Laminate, Daniel O' Connor and Herbert Faber. They realized that when you combine plastic with paper, it makes a material greater than the sum of its parts. Laminates made from this. It's just ordinary paper. If you take seven or eight pieces, soak them in liquid plastic, and press them together really
hard, you make a smooth, malleable, and lightweight material. Okconor and Faber were actually looking for a man-made alternative to micica, a mineral used in electrical insulation, hence the name for micica. But one of the glories of science is that an invention can have unexpected uses. They discovered that laminate could also be stuck to almost any surface. The problem with early laminates is that the plastic used to make them was opaque. Now, that's okay if you want to use brown paper, but really frustrating if you want bright, beautiful colors and patterns. Something like this. Now, the real breakthrough came with clear transparent plastics. So, I'm going to set myself the same challenge and make a beautiful piece of coronation laminate. And I
think I know a man who might be able to help. And I'll need to hit the road as laminate isn't the sort of thing you can make at home. Meet Marty Jobson, my partner in progress and a man who can make almost anything out of anything. I've asked him to track down everything I'll need. Only the top piece of paper needs to have the Union Jack. The rest can be plain. And for the liquid plastic, we need a rather potent mix. So it's made of two ingredients. And the first is faldahhide.
Right. It sounds nasty. And the vapor is unpleasant as well. But isn't that the stuff that they use to embalm bodies with as well? Yes, they used to. And sort of things in pickling jars. Right. Okay. So that's the first ingredient. We have to be a little bit careful of this. Paldahhide had been used in early laminates, but the second ingredient was new. another toxic substance called melamine. When it's mixed with formaldahhide, they form a completely transparent liquid plastic, which means that we can put on it.
So, we should be able to see that. I hope so. Okay. So, we've now soaked eight layers of paper in our wonder plastic and let them dry. But that's the easy bit. Marty, I've got the plasticky paper. Excellent. It's looking. Our big challenge is to get the sheets to bomb together. And as the name highpress laminate suggests, we're going to need a huge amount of force. So, we're going to put it between these plates here. Yeah. We're going to squash it with 10 tons. That's the equivalent of two African bull elephants. But before we do that, we got to put safety specs on.
Don't need them. These are British standard. So, I'm going to start pumping. Got to keep an eye on that. Three. Too little pressure and the plastic won't set. Right. Slow down. Seven and a half. Maybe a little half pump. Too much and it could all go horribly wrong. Oh, maybe a tiny smidge. A little more. That's it. Now we've reached the correct pressure. We need to apply extreme heat in a process called the setting. Temperature is 25 27 28.
Don't get too excited. He's got to go up to 150. Oh, really? Okay, let me do that again. It's 25, Martin. 149.6 150. We're there. So, this is like where things the magic's happening. This is it. Now, we have to hold it at that temperature for half an hour. Okay. I read that in the 1950s they actually used plates that had heating elements in them which meant that they didn't have to have men standing around for hours on end with blowtorrches. So let's see what we've got. Hallelujah. Oh. Oh, no. It's not bad. It's still got Oh, it's Oh. Oh, can I have a piece?
Look, there's a bit there. I think the problem here is that somebody overheated it. I think the problem clearly is too much pressure. But the colors held. Look, we put it back together. Really? Yeah. I can clearly see a Union Jack in there. I think I class that as a patriotic but only partial success. Happy Jubilee, Mark. We've crafted this rather beautiful Union Jack laminate for your kitchen. We stick it back together again. Look. Fortunately, the production of industrial laminate is a lot more sophisticated than two blo in a barn. In the 1950s, for Micah's UK operation alone was producing 30,000 sheets a week. to keep up with
the demand for a material that was colorful and easy to keep clean. I think the great advantage of something like for mica as a material is its hygienic qualities that it was a material which you know was also affordable and easy to make. It was made from paper. It's easy to clean and look after. It came in pattern and color which wood came in wood. It's endless the opportunities that are there to use it for. For example, we've got the units here which you can choose your own design. And I think to be able to do that in the 50s was so fresh. The idea that you could do print like you could do on dresses. And to be able to do it on a hard surface, something that would wipe down, I think that's to totally revolutionary.
My 50s kitchen is going to have this revolutionary material in a rather royal red. Wow. I love it. Look at these fitted cabinets here. This work surface. It's so streamlined, perfect working height, and it's so red as well. Bright. I mean, it's got color. God, I don't believe it. Marty just wouldn't give up. It's actually quite a nice piece of laminate. It's bright. It's colorful. Great Union Jack pattern. Okay, there's not enough to do the entire kitchen, but make really nice coronation coaster.
Kitchens like this were advertised as wipe clean wonders, easy to clean and quick to work in. And they heralded a golden age of color in the home. And if you take away the paper, the same chemicals which made my kitchen laminate possible also gave us the 50s most desirable dinner services. Melamine and formaldahhide could be molded into plastic cups and sauces. Melamine and for mica were huge in our house. I seem to remember we had a red kitchen. It was the decade when plastic was king and plastic offered this fantastic opportunity to introduce color and affordability.
Welcome back to the house the 50s builds. I'm Professor Brendan Walker, an experimental engineer, and I'm using this place as a lens to look back in time. I'm fast forwarding this house through the 1950s to find out how the decad's incredible inventions changed the way we live. And I'm starting with the kitchen, where the units and laminate worktop have already transformed the look and the layout. The fitted kitchen was sold as a room where housewives might actually want to spend some time. But women wanted more than just color.
They needed new tools to make life easier. The next entry for my wall of fame is a British engineer who had a brainwave. Why invent lots of different tools when you can get one to do lots of different chores? In 1950, Kenneth Wood launched a homegrown gadget which boasted an array of attachments from mixing to mincing. And he called it rather imaginatively the Kenwood Chef. Wood's business philosophy was simple. Find out what your customers want and sell it to them. You're sort of giving it more of a wiggle. A whisk is more like that.
I'm off to cookery school where chef Gizzy Erskin wants to show me how technology made food preparation so much easier. Is that any good? Afraid not. Okay. So, the whole point in whisking um is that you actually need to airate your product. All right. So, you need to actually beat air into it. So, you can see how I'm lifting the egg up there. Yes. Getting air into it. But why am I doing this? It's your job. I was enjoying watching you do that. Okay, you carry on. I'm going to get on with showing you my method.
Okay. Right now, one of these guys makes different. The mixer Gizzy's using may be from a later decade, but the engineering inside is pure 50s. Okay. And it's just a simply a matter of turning it on. Wood paid close attention to the science of how women went about making their breads and cakes. How you doing there? I'm I'm going to have to say this back. Okay. It's you against the meringue. You need to put some more gusto into this. But you are you've got two different processes going on. You're going round and round lifting it but also
working your way around the bowl. It's not just a circular action, which you can kind of see is what the Kenwood mixer does, you know. Yeah. Circular and circles within circles. Exactly. Yeah. See, as an engineer, I look at your repetitive motion, circles and circles. And if that electric mixer didn't exist, I'd invent it. I think it's just about there. I can also say without doubt, we have a much glossier finish compared to that. Definitely more solid. But there's the ultimate test to see whether your meringue is good or not, which is Well, I'm going to pop this on top of
your head. Go on then. I think that's doing pretty all right. And you can see that what we've got here, we managed to well, I'd say under five minutes. So, how much time do you think all this must have saved a housewife? And if you think about it, this meringue would have taken about 15 minutes. Making bread, which I imagine was a daily occurrence in those days. Easily 15 minutes with the kneading and mixing. So, there's half an hour straight away. And it's not just about saving time, it's also the energy expended because that is physically hard work doing that. It's a massive workout in the kitchen.
The chef started life as a luxury. It cost almost £20 at a time when the average yearly wage was around only £300. So it would have taken almost a month's salary to buy one of these mixers. Even so, they proved immensely popular. And by 1956, the company had a 1.5 million pound turnover. And Kenneth Wood claimed his place as one of Britain's youngest millionaires. Right. That was really nice. Very sticky. Well done, Tan. Oh, yes. It was amazing. I bought a beautiful machine, a Kenwood. Anything like that was a great excitement to have and changed your life.
Within a few years, British shoppers were swamped with a deluge of gadgets, and Britain was at the forefront of technology. Mr. Morphe and Mr. Richards came up with an electric toaster that did both sides of the bread at the same time, while Meza's Russell and Hobbs came up with the world's first automatic electric kettle. But there was one thing these gadgets couldn't do. Cut down on the washing up. By the mid-50s, a new material was promising to ride to the rescue. A material which had previously been used in this.
No, not uranium. That would be silly. It's the coating of this, the non-stick pan. During the war, scientists working on the atomic bomb made use of a new highly resistant plastic called PTFE. Discovered in the late30s, it was also super slippery. The first company to manufacture it called it Teflon, and it was easy to clean. A few years later, a Frenchman thought he'd found a clever use for it. In 1954, a keen angller, Mark Gregoire, was trying to put Teflon on his fishing tackle. He'd heard as an engineer that it was super slippery stuff, and it
might help to stop the reel from getting tangled up. But his wife pointed out that he should be trying to put it on her aluminium frying pan if he knew what was good for him. It turned out to be very good for him. Two years later, the Gregoires founded Tfile and started making 100 pans a day. So, how do you get non-stick to stick in the first place? Time to get my hands dirty with Marty again. First of all, what you do is you have to roughen up the surface of the frying pan so it's covered in lots of little ridges and bumps and cracks and grooves like little micro mountains.
Yeah, little micro mountains. And then there is a cunning trick we can play on this because the one thing that PTFE will stick to is itself. So then we take a semi PTFE that's actually this stuff here. Okay. Which has got PTFE mixed in with a glue like substance. The glue-like substance goes into all the little valleys and micro mountains. Right. Yes. And then when that sets it grips on. So, the first layer of nonstick doesn't actually stick. Mixed with glue, it just can't climb out of all those microscopic nooks and crannies in the scoured pan.
Simple enough, but will it work? There's only one way to find out. Make two pans, one with the primer coat and one without. Our first pan just gets a coating of pure PTFE onto the bare metal. But our second needs to be roughened up a little. Back in the 50s, I'd probably have done this with acid. Marty. Today, I'm going to use an industrial sand blaster normally meant for cleaning buildings. Here we go. Quite a force coming out of this.
I can see the pan vibrating. It's now really scratched and pitted. Time to apply the PTFE mixed with glue. And once that's set, the finishing layer. Both pans need to be baked in an oven at very high temperatures. Looks good. Well, it looks okay, but look, it's coming off already there. All right. So, my pan's a bit flaky, but it feels so much smoother than Marty's. So, which is best? Graeme. Time to call in an expert, a gecko called Graeme, who can stick to anything unless it's made from non-stick. Let's put Graeme in.
Yeah. Come on. Obviously, the pan's not being heated. We have to stress. Okay. Mark, is Graeme happy doing this? He's absolutely fine doing this. Oh, slipping. He is slipping. He's a bit like Michael Jackson. So, relatively successful. relatively Oh, thank you. Obviously, the PTFE will come off if we use it too much. Right, here we go. Let's try the proper pan. You know, you don't want to stay on this. He's slipping. Oh, he is slipping. He's slipping. Absolutely. Look, it might be covered in micro mountains, but he still can't He fell off. He fell off my pan.
Even though Marty's pan is a lot rougher, the gecko still can't cling onto its ultra smooth coating. Craft pans, a successful product for Jobson and Walker. It's not even vertical. Unlike Graham, many housewives embraced non-stick technology. Within a decade, Mark Gregoire's company, Tfile, was churning out a million non-stick pans a month. Non-stick pans had dozens, my dear. I do remember once my ex-husband bringing back kitchen things which were copper based.
Do me a favor. Non-stick materials made the woman's kitchen more advanced than the space race. PTFE would later find its way into space suits, fueling the myth that NASA had invented Teflon. At the start of the 50s, this all singing, all dancing kitchen must have seemed beyond the means of most British people. But consumer spending power was on the rise. In 1950, the average weekly wage was just over six pounds. By the end of the decade, it had almost doubled, while income tax fell from 9 shillings in the pound to seven. After austerity, Britain was now ready for prosperity, and kitchen technology was about to take on its greatest challenge yet. But there was one chore that every housewife still dreaded.
Wash day. Every week, all cooking would grind to a halt. The kitchen became filled with steam, nasty chemicals, and fearsome instruments of torture. Like the mangle used for ringing clothes dry. My neighbor Sheila Roberts remembers it only too well. When you put your soap on, just dip it in like that. really rub the two pieces of cloth together. So, what would wash day actually like? Me personally, horrible. I used to hate washing, but I used to cheat. I used to put my washing in soap the night before so it loosened everything off.
Would you do it every week washing or Well, if you had children, you do it every other day. That's a huge amount of time. Okay. Now you pick up your washboard. And the trick I used, I used to put soap actually on the washboard before I did the shirt. Okay, that's it. Is that good? Keep going. Now you pick up your shirt and do the whole shirt. That's it. Grab your heart.
She had a house of two kids, two adults. It's a lot of that expression, a woman's work is never done. Yeah. This is it. Price to wash it. Life was about fitting things in. When the babies were asleep, you do your hoovering or your washing. When they were playing on the floor, you'd get your prepare your meals. Was all a question of timing. Otherwise, you'd have no time or life to yourself if you didn't. Yeah. So, you had to be very precise about planning the work you did.
I did. Yes. So, it was like a small factory. Exactly. Yeah. So, that's the scrubbing done. It's taken me half an hour to do just six shirts, but at least I didn't have half a dozen dirty nappies as well. And after a thorough rinse, it's on to the mangle. See, you need some muscles for a wash day, wouldn't you? In the corner there. Thanks. This feels like very physical hard work. Did it Did you get tired? Yeah. You really knew you'd been working on washing day? Isn't this the bit that you might have got your husband to do? Oh, no, no, no. They were having a cup of tea or listening to the radio and um women were there to look after the
men and the children to cook and clean. It's just something that you were brought up to do. Can I just turn the hat? No. Go on. Yes. Go on. Please. The quicker you go, the easier it is. Oh, okay. There you go. I was making a bit of a meal with that, wasn't I? What really changed laundry day was the arrival of the washing machine. Hello. Delivery from Mr. Walker. Oo, bring it in. This is a twin tub, the Rolls-Royce of the kitchen. The first electric washing machines had appeared in the 30s, but ones like this promised to wash and spin dry in minutes. My neighbor Sheila has offered
to show me how it works. Yeah, I've hooked that in there to start with. Okay, that's when you're filling. It's a little bit tricky and you have to plum it in each time. That's my dirty clothes. Please. We'll do. I've got some nappies for you as well. That's horrible. That's what we used to do. In with my shirts. Yes. Don't forget they're going to be boiled. Twin tubs were eyewateringly expensive. At £95, this one cost as much as a small car, but women felt they were worth every penny.
Can you remember getting your first washing machine? Yes. We won some money on the football pools, about £500, and I bought a twin tub, a refrigerator, and a three-piece suite. Wow. I mean, so obviously so expensive. You needed to have a windfall to actually be able to afford these things. We did. Yes. Yeah. So, how do I turn it on then? That's the heater. Okay. And that's the timer. Working. God, that's just amazing. How excited must you have been to switch this on for the first time?
I just felt like chains had been lifted. You know, I could walk away and do something else and then come back and the washing would be complete. So, it really was hard to describe. The washing machine was the household must-have of the decade. Well, for women, their husbands didn't always see it that way. I don't think there was much discussion about it. It was just a case of nudging and elbowing till he gave in. But there was no feminism, you know. There was basically you could weedle and manipulate or you could have a row. That
was about it. The kitchen became a place where you could show off to your friends and became a matter of keeping up with the Joneses. I think one of the advantages of being a man then and not now was that actually you did provide for your wife. you could show off that you provided for your wife and this was sort of part of what you very important part of what you did. That's about it. Yep. It feels quite dry. Yeah. Check the collars cuffs. What you reckon? It's quite white, isn't it? Quite pleased with that. That's a lot drier than having been through the mango.
Definitely. Yes. 10 minutes on the line. No iriding. Now you're talking my kind of language, Sheila. I mean, with all these new gadgets coming into the kitchen, did it liberate you? Did you have more time to do other things? You weren't so tired. Um, you had more energy to do other things and um more time for you, me. Yes. At the end of the day, the washing machine delivered more than just a faster wash. It was one of the appliances that introduced women to a new concept, leisure time. Technology was changing the home, but this idea would change the families inside them. In their quest to keep Britain's housewives happy, manufacturers were making the 1950s kitchen brighter, cleaner, and easier to work in.
By the end of the decade, they were promising to turn it into a colorful room where a woman might actually want to spend her time. time they were selling with the latest laborsaving devices like twin tubs. Britain was booming and millions of middle-class women aspired to buy their way to a better future. But something rather ugly in the corner was holding them back. The lauder, where all food was stored. In 1950, fresh food meant going down the shops every day and in almost in every weather. It's where you get your milk, your veg, and your meat.
Hello, I'd like some meat, please. Women spent around 10 hours a week on food shopping alone. And because it was difficult to keep food cold at home, they would only buy small amounts at a time. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's way too big. Enter the gadget which changed all our lives. You just pop it in there. Careful with it. Nice. Thanks. My new refrigerator's arrived. Got complete with food as well. Is that standard? A fridge like mine was a big purchase, costing over £1,200 in today's money. In 1955, fewer than one in 10 homes had one.
I don't think my mother got a fridge until well into the 50s. In the summer, it was quite difficult. You'd have to keep milk in the sink in cold water. We got a fridge. That was a sensation. But the budget of April 1958 gave fridge manufacturers a massive boost. The purchase tax was slashed in half and by the end of the year sales had rocketed to over 400,000 and cooling technology was also beginning to change the food inside them. Lots of food was seasonal. Even something we take for granted today like chicken was a luxury back then because the journey from farm to plate had to be done quickly to keep the food fresh and that cost money.
The solution was to freeze food on a vast scale. It meant shops could store produce for much longer and order more of it. But there's one vital trick to getting frozen food to taste good. And that was the genius of my final unsung innovator, Mr. Clarence Bird's Eye. Before he became an inventor, Clarence was a bit of an adventurer who liked to go fishing in the Arctic Circle. He found that the fish he caught froze instantly on the sub-zero ice. And once Thor tasted much better than the fish that had been frozen slowly. And what Clarence realized applied not just to fish, but all food that's frozen slowly.
Right. Well, if you just take a carrot, say, and you freeze it in your freezer slowly, and then you thor it out, you end up with something like this. It goes all disgusting and floppy. Look, if I squeeze it, all the water will just run out. It's carrot juice. Cuz what's happening is the water that's inside the carrot turns into ice and the ice crystals grow slowly and they grow big. And that means all the cells inside the carrot get broken open and it loses all of its texture. Oh, it's like carrot frostbite. It's exactly the same as frostbite in fact. But if you freeze it quickly, you get tiny ice crystals, so you don't break open all the cells and you retain the texture.
In the 1920s, Clarence pioneered an early method for quick freezing, which involved pressing food packages between two very cold metal plates. But by the 1950s, the first supermarkets were introducing a new method called blast freezing, which meant food could be frozen in any shape or form. Blast freezers work by blowing super cooled air through a tunnel and onto the food. Marty's making one out of an empty drum, a commal garden leaf blower, and a tub full of ice. Why a bath of ice? Well, in the 50s, this is what they did. They would take the chickens first and they would plunge them into ice water to cool them down before they went into the freezer. After a bracing dip, our chickens get
sealed inside the freezing chamber. Say goodbye, chickens. There we go. In here, we have this hopper made of wire, and we fill this full of dry ice, solid carbon dioxide. I mean, how cold does that get? was -78 and a half degrees. That's colder than anywhere on Earth. So, here it is. That'll stop the lid blowing off, I hope. Are you ready? Yeah. Here we go. It's like Stevenson's rocket. Right. Attach the pipe. That's it. Chicken sales rocketed from 1 million birds at the start of the decade to 150 million by the mid60s.
Look at them. Come on, let's get one out. You get I'll get this one out. Let's see. With a hammer. Here we go. Okay. Good. Stop. Sorry. Here you go. One oven ready frozen chicken. That Well, it absolutely fil. You ready? May I? You may. I've got six. It's not going anywhere, is it? And that is how the supermarket industry was born. Frozen food became cool. Shoppers could now buy bags of frozen peas. And in 1955, Clarence Birds lived long enough to see his factory in Great Yarmouth
produce one of the most iconic foods of all time, the fish finger. When you think about it, food like the frozen fish finger is the ultimate laborsaving device. In 1950, women had inherited a kitchen where life was hard and most of the work was done by hand. In just 10 short years, they would see it blossom into a room that was colorful and easy to keep clean. A high-tech heaven that was brimming with gadgets. See all those pictures of domestic goddesses. And it all seemed to start in the early 50s and about color and about the importance of home. But what do my neighbors from the Wii think about the kitchen revolution they lived through?
Oh, hello. Come in. Come and take a look around. Very nice. Something out of a magazine, isn't it? Have a dig around through my appliances. Sorry, I haven't cleaned the oven. Oh, dear. I know. You might have known we'll be looking. So, when you came in the room, which item grabbed your eye first? Without a doubt, the washing machine. Why was that? Well, I had two children by then, and you could do all the washing and not get it dry, but you could get it washed and uh it made life so much easier. I can remember when my mother first had a fridge, and she
thought it was absolutely wonderful. She used to go shopping every day when you had a fridge, you could uh, you know, go every few days. Milk's not going to go sour. That was often a problem. or in the winter it would freeze and it'd have a silver lid on the top of the milk, wouldn't you? If you'd seen a kitchen like this at the start of the 50s, would you have thought it was at all possible? You know, you look at this and think I'd died and gone to heaven. No doubt about it. It would be a lovely kitchen for anyone who could afford it. But not me.
What are we going to do? To thank my guests, I've laid on a buffet fit for a queen. Coronation chicken. This brightly colored, lightly curried, pre-cooked dish was first served to her majesty's guests in 1953. But by the end of the decade, almost anyone could make it at home. Its main ingredient had been a luxury until blast freezing. It could be cooked quickly and easily. The mayonnaise could be whipped up in minutes. And perhaps best of all, this entire meal could be made the day before and kept cold.
All this created the impression of an effortless hostess. Anyone for more jelly and a kitchen to die for. Shall I put the kettle on? Brilliant. The scientific and technological advances of the 50s changed the way we cooked, washed, even shopped, and they would play their part in the seismic social change that followed in the 1960s. All that had planted the idea that the woman's world needed necessarily be confined to the kitchen or even the home. The time you spent in the kitchen would be cut down by 2/3 probably. And so you had time to think and time to agitate and time to
become a feminist if you like. There was time. The idea of, you know, you marry and you keep a nice house and you knit and you sew and you do things for the community. That went out the window. Thank God.
