This title accompanies Channel 4's programme that reveals just how radically life has been transformed by a century of science and technology. This "living experiment" transports a family, with all their technological dependencies, back to 1900 to live for three months in a house restored to the exact specifications of the era. As the family struggle to adjust to these strange conditions in which electricity, plumbing, central heating, basic hygiene and all the other essentials that we now take for granted have not yet been discovered, the real difference science has made to our lives becomes amusingly clear. For the three months the family live in this 1900 house with gas lighting, coal fires, candlelight, carbolic soaps and an outside privy. They dress in starched collars, wash their clothes with a "dolly", haul coal up the stairs and use an earth closet instead of a flushing toilet. Revealing and entertaining, combining scientific discovery with surprising insights into everyday life, this book is an accessible approach to the history of science.
- ISBN10 0752217119
- ISBN13 9780752217116
- Publish Date 24 September 1999
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 17 June 2003
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Pan Macmillan
- Imprint Channel 4 Books
- Edition Media tie-in
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 228
- Language English