Word: standards
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Bathroom (Viking), a newly updated and expanded version of an urbane study he published in 1966, Kira argues that the standard bathroom is uncomfortable, unsanitary and unsafe. The average 5-ft. by 7-ft. model is badly lit and ventilated; it seldom provides adequate storage and counter space for all the tubes, jars, bottles, blades, brushes and electrical appliances that have become the indispensable artifacts of ablution. Clearly, if cleanliness is next to godliness, it is also next to impossible in bathrooms that lack "facilities for perineal hygiene," meaning bidets. Moreover, some 275,000 people in the U.S. are injured...
Wider Seat. Kira concludes from continuing research that the standard toilet is "the most ill-suited fixture ever designed," whether for comfort or efficient elimination. The whatchamacallit should be from 5 in. to 9 in. lower and shaped so that the occupant could take the natural squatting position of primitive man; it should also have a wider padded seat and incorporate two water jets for cleansing. Many washbasins, he finds, are built "so low as to be ideal only for small children." He proposes a contoured bowl, 36 in. high, deep at one end, wide and shallow at the other...
...view, is the tub-shower. "The only substantive reason for taking a tub bath is to relax," he maintains, "and yet it is precisely this that the vast majority of tubs have not permitted the user to do." The tub should be longer (6 ft., v. the standard 5 ft.) and wider, have a contoured back to fit the curvature of the spine, a comfortable place to sit while foot washing and shampooing, and a hand spray for rinsing. Showers should be larger, have continuous wrap-around grab-bars and different-shaped handles located away from the water source...
Cranberg turned his attention toward hearth fires last winter; in an attempt to conserve oil, he supplemented his home heating with his two fireplaces. Frustrated by the inefficiency of a standard three-log fire, he studied what really happened when he poked at the logs to make the fire burn better. His conclusion: "I was opening up a furnace, prying the logs apart a bit or rotating them to expose the hot, charred surface in order to get more heat into the room." He was creating, in effect, something similar to what physicists call a "black body," a furnace-like...
Easy to Light. Applying this concept, Cranberg built the "Texas Fire-frame," a spindly metal contraption that looks like a standard fireplace grate with two taller uprights at the front corners fitted with adjustable metal arms that extend into the fireplace. To use it, he places a large log toward the rear of the grate, two smaller ones toward the front, and a fourth log, slightly smaller than the first, on the adjustable arms (see diagram). He then lowers the arms until the top log just touches the surface of the large one at the rear. This creates a cavity...