The Surprising Sources of Space-Saving Inventions
Some of today’s most ubiquitous appliances for compact living have rather unexpected backstories. Case in point: We can thank NASA for the Dustbuster.
Some of today’s most ubiquitous appliances for compact living have rather unexpected backstories. Case in point: We can thank NASA for the Dustbuster.
Welcome to Origin Story, a series that chronicles the lesser-known histories of designs that have shaped how we live.
Long before the Covid pandemic had people reconfiguring their homes to fit multiple—and sometimes competing—functions (think: dining rooms with on-demand desk setups, ad hoc gyms in unused bedroom corners), people were devising furniture and home wares that did more with less. Some of today’s most ubiquitous small-space inventions were born from the minds of makers who sought to solve particular problems in their own compact offices or residences. Others have more unconventional backstories, stemming from unrelated scientific missions before making their way into our homes. Read on for some of those tales.
In the late 19th century, inventor Sarah E. Goode became one of the first African American women to receive a United States patent for her design for the folding cabinet bed.
Courtesy United States Patent and Trademark Office (Public Domain)
The Folding Cabinet Bed
In the late 19th century, inventor Sarah E. Goode’s novel solution to the urbanite challenge of saving space in small apartments made her one of the first African American women to receive a United States patent. Born into slavery in Toledo, Ohio, in the mid-19th century, she gained her freedom after the Civil War and moved to Chicago, where she met her husband, Archibald, a carpenter with whom she opened a furniture shop. During that time, Goode designed the cabinet bed, which could be folded together to "occupy less space," she wrote in her patent application, and "form a desk suitable for office or general use." In 1884, Goode exhibited her flexible furniture creation at the Illinois State Fair. The following year her patent was granted.
The widely known fold-down bed named after its inventor, William Lawrence Murphy, started as a space-saving idea and has since evolved into a pop culture fixture.
Courtesy Collection at the Museum of the City of New York
The Murphy Bed
Goode’s design and an 1899 folding bed by African American inventor Leonard C. Bailey were precursors to the widely known variation named after inventor William Lawrence Murphy. At the turn of the 20th century, Murphy designed a bed with a pivot system that allowed it to fold up neatly to the wall behind it while he was living in a San Francisco studio apartment. As the lore goes, saving space wasn’t his only motivation: Norms of the time made it uncouth for a woman to enter a man’s bedroom, so in order for Murphy to host his love interest without risking scandal, he had to be able to stow away the bed to turn the space into a parlor. His "Disappearing Bed" was patented in 1912, the same year he married said love interest. By the mid-1920s, Murphy beds were considered status symbols, touted as luxury features in hotels and apartments. The fold-down bed was also a pop culture fixture, most famously appearing as a slapstick prop in a 1916 Charlie Chaplin film.
In 1903, Albert J. Parkhouse devised a wire clothes hanger using spare material from his employer, Timberlake Wire and Novelty Company, in response to a lack of coat hooks at the office building where he worked. Many modern models of the clothes hanger are based on his design.
Courtesy © Peter Marlow/Magnum Photos
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