151: "The first recorded application of electricty to run a machine occurred in 1883, in a grocery store in New York, when an electric motor was used to run a coffee grinder. Isaac Singer saw the possibilities of electricity and introduced an electrically powered model of his sewing machine as early as 1889. That year, Nikola Tesla, a Croatian immigrant, patented the efficient multiple-phase electric motor, and two years later, in association with George Westinghouse, he produced a small portable fan. The first electric vacuum cleaner was patented in 1901, and by 1917 vacuum cleaners has achieved such popularity that they could be ordered from the ubiquitous Montgomery Ward catalog. That same year, electric refrigerators began to be manufactures on a large scale in France and America. The Thor electric washing machine was first produced in 1909, and the Walker electric dishwasher began to be sold in 1918, by the 1920s both were being marketed on a large scale."
219: "all the 'modern' devices that contribute to our domestic comfort--central heating, indoor plumbing, running hot and cold water, electric light and power and elevators--were unavailable before 1890, and were well known by 1920. We live, like it or not, on the far side of a great technological divide. As John Lukacs reminds us, though the home of 1930 would be familiar to us, it would have been unrecognizable to the citizen of 1885."