But as anyone who uses these books knows, they also provide fantastic historical moments.... snapshots of a time and a place and a way of thinking.
On page 257 we find Louis Gibson, one of the great architects of the day, explaining the concept of a shower curtain.
Probably never before and certainly never again, will somebody need to use so many words to explain exactly what a shower curtain is and what it does.
But Gibson was writing at a time when indoor plumbing was cutting edge stuff. The concept of a shower had not yet been popularized.
Most everybody at the time was still washing alongside a tub or pump-handle.
His chapter on plumbing, which includes the shower curtain description, could easily be describing a house built today.
Louis Gibson's 1889 handbook was ground-breaking in its modern approach to traditional home building in the pre-electric era. In many ways it set the standard for what a good home required and how it should work.
Chapters from the 1889 Builders' Handbook can be downloaded for free at www.PioneerHandbooks.com.
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First electricity, now shower curtains? I am lost for words. The mind boggles! O_O
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That page on shower curtains gives me a smile every time I read it. Just thinking that there was a time and a place when they had to be explained. Which would be true of almost everything I guess.
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