Life Hacks Of 1955
What a "gadgets" guide from 1955 can tell us about how society and consumption has changed since then
So I was browning through my local second-hand bookshop the other day, George Kelsall Booksellers, and I found a rather fascinating book (to be strictly accurate, my daughter did, so I should probably dedicate this post to her).
For just 10 shillings (£21.20, adjusted for inflation), it promises the latest annual goldmine circa 1955 of 400 ingenious gadgets and devices which was apparently praised so generously on the radio. This, it says, is the novelty-packed annual the SUNDAY GRAPHIC once described as: “The very book thousands are looking for”. It promises brilliant ideas for home and nursery, garden appliances, office, shop and ware-house devices, hobby and sports aids, garage and car gadgets, seasonal novelties and gifts, and seventy novel gadgets and devices for various practical purposes.
But it’s in the last sentence that we see the essential difference between then and now, in the use of the word “ideas”. When we now in 2023 talk about gadgets we talk about finished, manufactured items that we can buy. But this book from 1955 contains literally no items you could buy. Every single “gadget” is actually an idea for something you could make.
Or what we would call a “life hack”.
So let’s take a look at some of those life hacks from 1955, both the good, and the not so good…
So this is the first one. Bit underwhelming, and a tad fiddly.
I get it. But how would you get magnetised wires?
This, I fear you would then give to your wife. 1950s domestic drudgery was surely hard enough without using homemade implements.
Now, here we’re moving onto the stuff of nightmares. How big an area would this wiper be able to keep clear?
But now we get to this, which 68 years later is still genius, provided of course that your ladder’s made of stainless steel and not aluminium, and that it’s the type of stainless steel that’s magnetic (not all are, apparently).
And now we’re back to a life-hack which is essentially that it’s a good hack in life to be the sort of practical person who can just mend broken stuff.
This is an interesting one, where what was once a life-hack (using a power drill not as a drill but as a powered filing implement) is probably now just supported out of the box. (Think of all the times you see a cordless power drill being used as a powered screwdriver).
This one’s not so much a life-hack as a craft-project. But it actually looks quite cool. I guess the advantage of making it, rather than buying it, is that you could build it to the exact size to fit your chair.
I would use this! Although my main use would be in cleaning out bottles prior to putting them in the recycling, where this would be for cleaning them prior to reuse. Only slight worry is if the wooden handle would, over time, get a bit manky.
I think file this one under, pointless, filler, were-you-running-out-of-inspiration-for-items? I get that you can run out of clothes pegs, but would you happen to have a bunch of bulldog clips, just lying around?
But now we’re back to something so sensible that it now comes as standard in the products we buy, out of the box.
When I get to the words “nailed in place” I realise that this life-hack is that you don’t need to go to the cobblers if you yourself are a cobbler. The problem with our disposable modern life, is that my toe nails invariably push a hole in the mesh upper of my trainers, long before the sole fails.
Okay, this is good, though again more of a craft project. It does rather gloss over where you get two thin metal plates of the exact same size as your two spare books. Reading it now, it makes me feel that people of my grand and great-grandparents’ era were far more resourceful, but maybe I’m wrong: maybe people back then were reading this book, and thinking, really? I’m just supposed to happen to have a couple of sheets of metal just the right size lying around?
I’m torn on this one. On one hand, I’m thinking that it’s an inspired hack for say, a reading lamp, but on the other, I’m thinking that you’d look like a complete lunatic.
That’s just a random selection from the first few pages of the book. Apparently, there’s 400 of them. If people find this interesting, I might do a few more posts, perhaps on themes, such as ones that are genuinely good, and one that are incredibly lame.
But I do find it a fascinating window onto a more self-reliant age, where we didn’t expect our tools to come pre-packaged and ready-made.
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