Late last year, Frances Gabe, the creator of the world’s only self-cleaning home, passed away at the age of 101. The errantly charming artist, sculptor, and inventor should’ve been famous. In 1984, after receiving a patent from the US government, Gabe built a home in Newberg, Oregon, that washed itself: spray nozzles in the ceilings, floors sloped for drainage, a cupboard that was both dish container and dishwasher. She’d grown tired of the pain of housework, bending down to clean and scrubbing at tiny stains. “Stoop, stoop, stooping is stupid,” she once said in a short TV program about the house.
Grace Quah, a graduate of the Bartlett School of Architecture who works in design, writing, and film, recently posted a link to Gabe’s obituary on her Twitter — Gabe’s death was not publicized until last month — adding, “Basically my final year masters project 50 years ago, no one has built a self-cleaning house since Gabe’s.” Quah’s project, “Silvertown Plug-in — a spatial critique of domestic labour,” is a film set in 2034, in London’s industrial Silvertown neighborhood. There, Jetsons-style homes contain automated appliances built right into their walls, drastically reducing the domestic labor attributed to women and also making it visible.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
