Shows A - Z : How's That Work? : Icemaker, Water Heater, Sewing Machine : Home & Garden Television

Icemaker, Water Heater, Sewing Machine
For thousands of years, ice has been used in a way to preserve food. In the early 1900s manufacturers sold the first refrigerators. They came with ice trays that had to be manually filled. Then, in the 1950s, automatic icemakers were installed in refrigerators, creating an easier way to make ice. Next, in 1889, a Norwegian immigrant in Pittsburgh named Edwin Ruud invented the automatic storage water heater. These early heaters worked with a gas burner, heating and storing the water until it was ready to use--pretty much the same concept we use today. Early 20th-century models sold on the promise of a hot bath a day for everyone in the house. Eventually, every home had one. Then, for half a century, several inventors around the world tried and failed to make sewing easier and more mechanized. Most inventions tried to mimic hand stitching, but these complicated contraptions rarely worked. In 1844, Elias Howe decided there was a way to ease his wife's work as a seamstress and created a machine that could make a lock stitch--a threaded pattern that wouldn't come undone.

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