What are Electric Blankets?
Electric blankets use grids of thin, insulated wires to generate heat internally. Earlier electric blankets used adjustable thermostats to control temperature, but modern electric blankets (after 1984) use rheostats. Rheostats not only measure the heat generated by the blanket, but the body heat generated by the user as well. This results in a more even heating and fewer hot spots. The history of electric blankets is a little murky. When electricity was first introduced into households around the 1900s, would-be inventors added an electrical element to many common items. The first electric blankets were bulky and extremely dangerous. Most people saw them as curiosities, not legitimate consumer products. Few examples of early electric blankets exist intact. It wasn’t until the 1920s that electric blankets became appealing to the general public. Tuberculosis patients would spend much of their recovery time outdoors in the fresh air, but the temperatures would drop overnight. Nurses began