American Ingenuity and Innovation: Kitchen Appliance Instruction Manuals

 For a limited time we have copies signed by the author.

Whether the devices they support became commonplace or passed rapidly out-of-fashion (assuming they ever truly had a moment of being in-fashion), the instruction manuals showcased in this book promised Americans–most of them housewives–the advantages of rapidly changing kitchen technology.

Liz Pollock, proprietor of The Cook’s Bookcase in Santa Cruz, California, and a longtime collector of kitchen ephemera, reveals a world in which blenders, coffee grinders, dishwashers, microwaves, and microwaves were new and revolutionary enough that users needed to be told both how they worked and all they could do.

(To say nothing of devices like an arched hot dog griddles, peanut butter machines, tabletop broilers, and the slightly mysterious food converter from Hamilton Beach.)

Pollock offers photographs of more than 170 of these manuals published over a span of years, from the Hot-Shot Hot Water Dispenser of 1930 (“The Electrical Marvel of the Age!”) to the Emerson In-Sink-Erator of 2003, which came with access to a toll-free answer line.

She also traces the supporting apparatus behind the manuals and the appliances they illuminated. These could be separate recipe pamphlets enclosed with the new equipment, or the voices of prominent spokespeople.

Cookbooks also evolved to assume that readers had electric mixers, freezers, and eventually food processors. Even electric companies got in on the act, urging consumers to plan new kitchens around abundant appliances.

While hardly comprehensive (a multi-volume set would hardly suffice to document the range of what was offered), American Ingenuity and Innovation is a concise summary of the evolution of appliances, the way they were marketed, and to whom. (Pollock has sought out manuals and advertisements featuring people of color or in languages other than English; they are scant.) This self-published, simply-designed effort is not as slick as some four-color books, but it is written with a sense of curiosity and from a perspective of long and abiding interest.

Paperback. Black-and-white photographs throughout. 8.5” x 11”.