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A home appliance, also referred to as a domestic appliance, an electric appliance or a household appliance, is a machine which assists in household functions such as
cooking Cooking, also known as cookery or professionally as the culinary arts, is the art, science and craft of using heat to make food more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or Food safety, safe. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from ...
, cleaning and food preservation. The domestic application attached to home appliance is tied to the definition of appliance as "an instrument or device designed for a particular use or function". ''
Collins English Dictionary The ''Collins English Dictionary'' is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow. It was first published in 1979. Corpus The dictionary uses language research based on the Collins Corpus, which is ...
'' defines "home appliance" as: "devices or machines, usually electrical, that are in your home and which you use to do jobs such as cleaning or cooking". The broad usage allows for nearly any device intended for domestic use to be a home appliance, including
consumer electronics Consumer electronics, also known as home electronics, are electronic devices intended for everyday household use. Consumer electronics include those used for entertainment, Communication, communications, and recreation. Historically, these prod ...
as well as
stove A stove or range is a device that generates heat inside or on top of the device, for - local heating or cooking. Stoves can be powered with many fuels, such as natural gas, electricity, gasoline, wood, and coal. Due to concerns about air pollu ...
s,
refrigerator A refrigerator, commonly shortened to fridge, is a commercial and home appliance consisting of a thermal insulation, thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump (mechanical, electronic or chemical) that transfers heat from its inside to ...
s,
toaster A toaster is a small electric appliance that uses radiant heat to brown sliced bread into toast, the color caused by the Maillard reaction. It typically consists of one or more slots into which bread is inserted, and heating elements, o ...
s and
air conditioner Air conditioning, often abbreviated as A/C (US) or air con (UK), is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior temperature, and in some cases, also controlling the humidity of internal air. Air c ...
s. The development of self-contained electric and gas-powered appliances, an American innovation, emerged in the early 20th century. This evolution is linked to the decline of full-time domestic servants and desire to reduce household chores, allowing for more leisure time. Early appliances included
washing machine A washing machine (laundry machine, clothes washer, washer, or simply wash) is a machine designed to laundry, launder clothing. The term is mostly applied to machines that use water. Other ways of doing laundry include dry cleaning (which uses ...
s,
water heater Water heating is a heat transfer process that uses an energy source to heat water above its initial temperature. Typical domestic uses of hot water include cooking, cleaning, bathing, and space heating. In industry, hot water and water heated t ...
s, refrigerators, and
sewing machine Diagram of a modern sewing machine Animation of a modern sewing machine as it stitches A sewing machine is a machine used to sew fabric and materials together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolutio ...
s. The industry saw significant growth post-World War II, with the introduction of
dishwasher A dishwasher is a machine that is used to clean dishware, cookware, and cutlery automatically. Unlike dishwashing, manual dishwashing, which relies on physical scrubbing to remove soiling, the mechanical dishwasher cleans by spraying hot wat ...
s and clothes dryers. By the 1980s, the appliance industry was booming, leading to mergers and antitrust legislation. The US
National Appliance Energy Conservation Act The National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987 (NAECA; ) is a United States Act of Congress that regulates energy consumption of specific household appliances. Though minimum Energy Efficiency Standards were first established by the Unit ...
of 1987 mandated a 25% reduction in energy consumption every five years. By the 1990s, five companies dominated over 90% of the market.
Major appliance A major appliance is a non-portable or semi-portable machine used for routine housekeeping tasks such as cooking, washing laundry, or food preservation. Such appliances are sometimes collectively known as white goods, as the products were trad ...
s, often called
white goods A major appliance is a non-portable or semi-portable machine used for routine housekeeping tasks such as cooking, washing laundry, or food preservation. Such appliances are sometimes collectively known as white goods, as the products were tradi ...
, include items like refrigerators and washing machines, while
small appliance A small domestic appliance, also known as a small electric appliance or minor appliance or simply a small appliance, small domestic or small electric, is a portable or semi-portable machine, generally used on table-tops, counter-tops or oth ...
s encompass items such as toasters and coffee makers. Product design shifted in the 1960s, embracing new materials and colors. Consumer electronics, often referred to as brown goods, include items like TVs and computers. There is a growing trend towards home automation and internet-connected appliances.
Recycling Recycling is the process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. This concept often includes the recovery of energy from waste materials. The recyclability of a material depends on its ability to reacquire the propert ...
of home appliances involves dismantling and recovering materials.


History

While many appliances have existed for centuries, the self-contained electric or gas powered appliances are a uniquely American innovation that emerged in the early twentieth century. The development of these appliances is tied to the disappearance of full-time domestic servants and the desire to reduce the time-consuming activities in pursuit of more recreational time. In the early 1900s, electric and gas appliances included
washing machine A washing machine (laundry machine, clothes washer, washer, or simply wash) is a machine designed to laundry, launder clothing. The term is mostly applied to machines that use water. Other ways of doing laundry include dry cleaning (which uses ...
s, water heaters, refrigerators,
kettle A kettle, sometimes called a tea kettle or teakettle, is a device specialized for boiling water, commonly with a ''lid'', ''spout'', and ''handle''. There are two main types: the ''stovetop kettle'', which uses heat from a cooktop, hob, and the ...
s and sewing machines. The invention of Earl Richardson's small electric
clothes iron A clothes iron (also flatiron, smoothing iron, dry iron, steam iron or simply iron) is a small appliance that, when heated, is used to press Clothing, clothes to remove Wrinkle, wrinkles and unwanted creases. Domestic irons generally range in o ...
in 1903 gave a small initial boost to the home appliance industry. In the
Post–World War II economic expansion The post–World War II economic expansion, also known as the postwar economic boom or the Golden Age of Capitalism, was a broad period of worldwide economic expansion beginning with the aftermath of World War II and ending with the 1973–1975 r ...
, the domestic use of dishwashers, and
clothes dryer A clothes dryer (tumble dryer, drying machine, drying device, or simply dryer) is a powered Home appliance, household appliance that is used to remove moisture from a load of clothing, bedding and other textiles, usually after they are washed in ...
s were part of a shift for convenience. Increasing
discretionary income Disposable income is total personal income minus current taxes on income. In national accounting, personal income minus personal current taxes equals disposable personal income or household disposable income. Subtracting personal outlays ( ...
was reflected by a rise in miscellaneous home appliances. In America during the 1980s, the industry shipped $1.5 billion worth of goods each year and employed over 14,000 workers, with revenues doubling between 1982 and 1990 to $3.3 billion. Throughout this period, companies merged and acquired one another to reduce research and production costs and eliminate competitors, resulting in
antitrust legislation In the United States, antitrust law is a collection of mostly federal laws that govern the conduct and organization of businesses in order to promote economic competition and prevent unjustified monopolies. The three main U.S. antitrust statute ...
. The
United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear w ...
reviews compliance with the
National Appliance Energy Conservation Act The National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987 (NAECA; ) is a United States Act of Congress that regulates energy consumption of specific household appliances. Though minimum Energy Efficiency Standards were first established by the Unit ...
of 1987, which required manufacturers to reduce the energy consumption of the appliances by 25% every five years. In the 1990s, the appliance industry was very consolidated, with over 90% of the products being sold by just five companies. For example, in 1991, dishwasher manufacturing market share was split between
General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...
with 40% market share,
Whirlpool A whirlpool is a body of rotating water produced by opposing currents or a current running into an obstacle. Small whirlpools form when a bath or a sink is draining. More powerful ones formed in seas or oceans may be called maelstroms ( ). ''Vo ...
with 31%,
Electrolux Electrolux AB () is a Swedish Multinational corporation, multinational home appliance manufacturer, headquartered in Stockholm. It is consistently ranked the world's second largest appliance maker by units sold, after Whirlpool Corporation, Whi ...
with 20%,
Maytag The Maytag Corporation is an American Home appliance, home and commercial appliance company. The company has been owned by Whirlpool Corporation since April 2006. History The Maytag Washing Machine Company was founded in 1893 by businessm ...
with 7% and
Thermador Thermador is part of BSH Home Appliances Corporation, a fully owned subsidiary of BSH Hausgeräte GmbH, the sixth largest appliance manufacturer in the world in 2022. The Thermador brand specializes in cooking appliance equipment such as ovens ...
with just 2%.


Major appliances

Major appliances, also known as white goods, comprise major household appliances and may include: air conditioners, dishwashers, clothes dryers, drying cabinets,
freezer A refrigerator, commonly shortened to fridge, is a commercial and home appliance consisting of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump (mechanical, electronic or chemical) that transfers heat from its inside to its external enviro ...
s, refrigerators,
kitchen stove A kitchen stove, often called simply a stove or a cooker, is a kitchen appliance designed for the purpose of cooking food. Kitchen stoves rely on the application of Heat transfer#Conduction, direct heat for the cooking process and may also conta ...
s, water heaters, washing machines, trash compactors,
microwave oven A microwave oven, or simply microwave, is an electric oven that heats and cooks food by exposing it to electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range. This induces Dipole#Molecular dipoles, polar molecules in the food to rotate and ...
s, and induction cookers. White goods were typically painted or enameled white, and many of them still are.


Small appliances

Small appliances are typically small household electrical machines, also very useful and easily carried and installed. Yet another category is used in the kitchen, including:
juicer A juicer, also known as a juice extractor, is a tool used to extract juice from fruits, herbs, leafy greens and other types of vegetables in a process called juicing. It crushes, grinds, and/or squeezes the juice out of the pulp. A juicer cla ...
s, electric mixers,
meat grinder A meat grinder (also called a "meat mincer" in the UK) is a kitchen appliance for mincing (fine chopping) and/or mixing of raw or cooked meat, Fish (food), fish, vegetables or similar food. It replaces tools like the Mezzaluna, mincing knife ...
s, coffee grinders, deep fryers, herb grinders,
food processor A food processor is a kitchen appliance used to facilitate repetitive tasks in the preparation of food. Today, the term almost always refers to an electric-motor-driven appliance, although there are some manual devices also referred to as "food ...
s, electric kettles,
waffle iron A waffle iron or waffle maker is a kitchen utensil used to cook waffles between two hinged metal plates. Both plates have gridded indentations to shape the waffle from the batter or dough placed between them. The plates are heated and the iron ...
s, coffee makers,
blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer (from Latin ''mixus, the PPP of miscere eng. to Mix)'' or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsify food and other substances. A stationary ...
s,
rice cooker A rice cooker or rice steamer is an automated kitchen appliance designed to boil or steam rice. It consists of a heat source, a cooking bowl, and a thermostat. The thermostat measures the temperature of the cooking bowl and controls the heat. C ...
s, toasters and exhaust hoods.


Product design

In the 1960s the product design for appliances such as
washing machine A washing machine (laundry machine, clothes washer, washer, or simply wash) is a machine designed to laundry, launder clothing. The term is mostly applied to machines that use water. Other ways of doing laundry include dry cleaning (which uses ...
s, refrigerators, and electric toasters shifted away from
Streamline Moderne Streamline Moderne is an international style of Art Deco architecture and design that emerged in the 1930s. Inspired by Aerodynamics, aerodynamic design, it emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements. In indu ...
and embraced technological advances in the fabrication of sheet metal. A choice in color, as well as fashionable accessory, could be offered to the
mass market The term "mass market" refers to a market for goods produced on a large scale for a significant number of end consumers. The mass market differs from the niche market in that the former focuses on consumers with a wide variety of backgrounds with ...
without increasing production cost. Home appliances were sold as space-saving ensembles.


Consumer electronics

Consumer electronics (or home electronics) are electronic ( analog or
digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...
) equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. In British English, they are often called " brown goods" by producers and sellers, to distinguish them from "
white goods A major appliance is a non-portable or semi-portable machine used for routine housekeeping tasks such as cooking, washing laundry, or food preservation. Such appliances are sometimes collectively known as white goods, as the products were tradi ...
" which are meant for housekeeping tasks, such as washing machines and refrigerators, although nowadays, these could be considered brown goods, some of these being connected to the Internet. Some such appliances were traditionally finished with genuine or imitation wood, hence the name. This has become rare but the name has stuck, even for goods that are unlikely ever to have had a wooden case (e.g. camcorders). In the 2010s, this distinction is absent in large big box consumer electronics stores, which sell both entertainment, communication, and home office devices and kitchen appliances such as refrigerators. The highest selling consumer electronics products are
compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...
s. Examples are: home electronics,
radio receiver In radio communications, a radio receiver, also known as a receiver, a wireless, or simply a radio, is an electronic device that receives radio waves and converts the information carried by them to a usable form. It is used with an antenna. ...
s, TV sets,
VCRs A videocassette recorder (VCR) or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other AV sources and can play back the recording after rewinding. The use of a VCR to re ...
, CD and
DVD player A DVD player is a machine that plays DVDs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to ...
s,
digital camera A digital camera, also called a digicam, is a camera that captures photographs in Digital data storage, digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film or film stock. Dig ...
s,
camcorder A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-sw ...
s,
still camera A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...
s,
clock A clock or chronometer is a device that measures and displays time. The clock is one of the oldest Invention, human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month, a ...
s,
alarm clock An alarm clock or alarm is a clock that is designed to alert an individual or group of people at a specified time. The primary function of these clocks is to awaken people from their night's sleep or short naps; they can sometimes be used for o ...
s,
computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...
s, video game consoles,
HiFi High fidelity (hi-fi or, rarely, HiFi) is the high-quality reproduction of sound. It is popular with audiophiles and home audio enthusiasts. Ideally, high-fidelity equipment has inaudible noise and distortion, and a flat (neutral, uncolored) f ...
and
home cinema A home cinema, also called home theater, is a home entertainment audio-visual system that seeks to reproduce a movie theater experience and mood using consumer grade electronic video and audio equipment and is set up in a private home. In ...
,
telephone A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that enables two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most ...
s and
answering machine An answering machine, answerphone, or message machine, also known as telephone messaging machine (or TAM) in the United Kingdom, UK and some Commonwealth countries, ansaphone or ansafone (from a trade name), or telephone answering device (TAD), ...
s.


Life spans

A survey conducted in 2020 of more than thirteen thousand people in the UK revealed how long appliance owners had their appliances before needing to replace them due to a fault, deteriorating performance, or the age of the appliance.


Home automation

There is a trend of networking home appliances together, and combining their controls and key functions. For instance, energy distribution could be managed more evenly so that when a washing machine is on, an
oven upA double oven A ceramic oven An oven is a tool that is used to expose materials to a hot environment. Ovens contain a hollow chamber and provide a means of heating the chamber in a controlled way. In use since antiquity, they have been use ...
can go into a delayed start mode, or vice versa. Or, a washing machine and clothes dryer could share information about load characteristics (gentle/normal, light/full), and synchronize their finish times so the wet laundry does not have to wait before being put in the dryer. Additionally, some manufacturers of home appliances are quickly beginning to place hardware that enables internet connectivity in home appliances to allow for remote control, automation, communication with other home appliances, and more functionality enabling connected cooking. Internet-connected home appliances were especially prevalent during recent
Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...
events.


Recycling

Appliance recycling consists of dismantling waste home appliances and scrapping their parts for reuse. The main types of appliances that are recycled are T.V.s, refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, and computers. It involves disassembly, removal of hazardous components and destruction of the equipment to recover materials, generally by shredding, sorting and grading.


See also

* *


Notes


References


Further reading

* * Kriske, Rob; Kriske, Mary (July/August 1984)
"Home Appliance Repair"
''
Mother Earth News ''Mother Earth News'' is a bi-monthly American magazine that has a circulation of 500,520 . It is published in Topeka, Kansas. Since its founding, ''Mother Earth News'' has promoted renewable energy, recycling, family farms, good agricultura ...
''. Accessed May 2015. *


External links

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