As a designer on home automation and technology, I found this information regarding a 1957 Home of the Future fascinating.
The Monsanto House of the Future, or simply the Home of the Future, was an attraction at Disneyland from 1957 to 1967. It was sponsored by the Monsanto Company. The design and engineering of the house was done jointly by Monsanto, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Walt Disney Imagineering.
Visitors were treated to a glimpse of carefree futuristic living
The House of the Future was just one of a number of fairground houses of the future that never made it off the grounds and into the marketplace. The attraction offered a tour of a home of the future, set in the year 1986, and featured household appliances such as microwave ovens, which did eventually became commonplace.
Visitors were treated to a glimpse of carefree futuristic living inside a plastic-walled floating cruciform structure with picture phones, height-adjustable sinks, dishes washed by ultrasonic waves, and atomic food preservation. “It was the permanence, the durability of plastic that made the Monsanto house a marvel,” writes Bernard Cooper in his book Maps to Anywhere. “The wings, it was said, would never sag. The plastic floor would never buckle, chip, or crack.” At the time, 30 percent of Monsanto’s business was in plastics, synthetic resins, and surface coatings.
The attraction offered a tour of a home of the future, set in the year 1986
The house survived the introduction of New Tomorrowland in 1967, but closed shortly after, as Monsanto’s attention shifted to their new sponsored attraction, Adventure Thru Inner Space. The building was so sturdy that when demolition crews failed to demolish the house using wrecking balls, torches, chainsaws and jackhammers, the building was ultimately demolished by using choker chains to crush it into smaller parts. The reinforced polyester structure was so strong that the half-inch steel bolts used to mount it to its foundation broke before the structure itself did.
Introducing the Home of the Future: