Electrified

In ten years' time, the gadget-laden U.S. householder will be able to do almost everything but change the baby with the flick of a switch. So predicted General Electric's Vice President W. V. O'Brien last week. Electronic devices will thaw frozen foods, cook them in a matter of minutes or seconds; electric incinerators will burn up the waste. Heat pumps (for both heating and cooling homes) will mushroom from the few thousand now in use to 500,000. There will be television screens that hang like pictures on the wall, connected to the set only by a thin wire.

The coming of such new devices will not hold back the spread of older gadgets and conveniences, said O'Brien. Refrigerators, now nearing the saturation point in homes (90%), will approach 100%; use of electric ranges and water heaters will almost double; home freezers will triple; clothes dryers will nearly quintuple; room air conditioners will increase elevenfold, and television receivers will go up from 28 million to 66 million, of which 44 million will be color sets.

In the next decade, O'Brien predicted, the electrical industry will sell as much equipment as it has in its entire 75-year history. And the average family's investment in electric appliances, now $1,300, will soar to $5,000.

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