7 February 2013 Last updated at 00:01

In pictures: The household gadgets of yesterday

A new archive from website historypin.com, in collaboration with npower and Mirrorpix, is collecting pictures from the past. This 1960s dishwasher by Charles Colston Ltd cost 85 guineas. The first dishwasher was patented in 1886 by Josephine Cockrane, but was taken up only by businesses because of the amount of hot water required to run it. Home dishwashers became more common in the 1970s.

The first electric hair-dryer was invented in 1890 by French salon owner Alexandre Godefoy. This aluminium hairdryer from 1925 had two heat settings and a wooden handle.

The Regency TR-1 transistor radio was the smallest wireless radio on the market in 1955.

William Henry Hoover purchased a patent for the vacuum cleaner in 1908. This was his first commercial version - Model 0 - used here back in the 1920s.

The first commercially successful toaster was the D12, launched by General Electric in 1909. A British firm called Crompton & Company is known to have designed an electric toaster in 1893.

The DynaTAC 800x portable phone offered 30 minutes of talk time or eight hours on standby. It was launched in 1983 and cost $3,995 (£2,553).

The microwave oven was invented in 1946. It launched in the US in the late 1940s and in Britain in 1959. This model is from the late 1960s.

The electric washing machine dates back to 1906. The Thor Electric Washing Machine and Mangle, pictured, is from 1927 and was one of the first models to feature an electric dolly which "agitated" the washing rather than the tub tumbling it around.

The "tin stove" television was designed for John Logie Baird by Percy Packman in 1930, but sold only about 1,000 sets as it was cheaper to buy a DIY TV kit. The first broadcasts went out in 1929.

The 1927 Monitor Top refrigerator got its name from the exposed compressor on the top of it, which was said to resemble the cylindrical turret of the civil war gunship, USS Monitor. It was the first fridge to be made completely from steel rather than wood.

Electric kettles had been experimented with since the 1890s, but the first kettle with a submersible immersion heater inside it was manufactured by the Swan Company in 1922. It could boil six pints of water in nine minutes.

The comparatively futuristic Commodore VIC-20 8-bit home computer was released in 1980. More images from the Remember How We Used To series can be found at Historypin's website.

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In pictures: The household gadgets of yesterday

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