Comfort of water is not really new

By David Maurer

Published: May 4, 2008

When ancient Greeks, Romans and Persians discovered how comfortable goat skins filled with water were to sleep on, they ushered in a new chapter in beds.
But it wasn’t until the late 1960s that the modern water bed was made available to the general public. We can thank an enterprising San Francisco State University student named Charles Hall for that.
Hall came up with what he called the “Pleasure Pit” while working on a graduate design program at the school. It was basically a large, heavy vinyl bag filled with water.
Hall sold the first ones out of the back of a van. They were an immediate hit, especially among the hippies populating the City by the Bay.
As people discovered the pleasures of sleeping on a bed of undulating motion, the water bed reached fad status. James Godfrey, a University of Virginia student, gets credit for making the water bed available to folks living in the Charlottesville area. Through his efforts the Interior Forum started selling them here in February 1971.
Hospitals caught on
“They’re not as new as you’d think,” Godfrey told Jane Cowles, a reporter for the Daily Progress during a March 1971 interview. “Originally they were used in hospitals and convalescent homes.”
Godfrey was referring to a type of water bed invented by Scottish physician Neil Arnott in 1832. He named it Dr. Arnott’s Hydrostatic Bed, and it was intended to help prevent bed sores in invalid patients.
Arnott’s model was constructed of rubber-impregnated canvas and resembled a large hot water bottle. The physician was more interested in helping people than making money and didn’t patent his invention.
Hall, on the other hand, applied for a patent in 1969. A patent search revealed that a water bed had been described in the 1942 novel “Beyond This Horizon,” as well as the 1956 novel “Double Star.”
Strange Land
A water bed also was mentioned in the 1961 best-seller “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein. In 1980 Heinlein revealed that he had designed his own water bed in the mid-1930s during a period of his life when he had been bedridden.
Perhaps the first mention of water beds being used in this country came via Mark Twain. He wrote about them in an article he did for the New York Times in 1871.
The famous writer titled the piece “A New Beecher Church” and mentioned the special beds while writing about the church’s infirmary. He wrote that they were “always in demand, and never out of service.”
Although it isn’t certain, these water beds were
probably similar to the one’s Arnott invented. What was needed for the next evolution of the water bed was a cheap, easily available material.
This arrived in the form of plasticized polyvinyl chloride. Called vinyl for short, it was invented by Waldo Lonsbury Semon in 1926.
All that was left now was for someone to use vinyl to make a water bed. Hall, with the help of fellow students Paul Heckel and Evan Fawkes, were up to the task.
Hall originally wanted to design a new type of chair. His first effort consisted of filling a large vinyl bag with 300 pounds of cornstarch.
The cornstarch proved to be too unyielding and not very comfortable. The brain gears got whirling again, and the next bag was filled with Jell-O.
That substance proved far from satisfactory as well. Hall decided to chuck the entire chair idea and went to work on making a bed.
That worked.
Even though Hall’s design turned out to have the patentability of a fork, he retained the credit for coming up with the modern version of the water bed. But as comfortable as they are, they do have some shortcomings.
The obvious one is their vulnerability to sharp, penetrating objects. Godfrey, in the spirit of full disclosure, mentioned a few other disadvantages.
“The beds will last for a lifetime, if they’re not mistreated,” Godfrey said, before jumping up and belly flopping onto a display bed to show how strong it was. Current estimates of longevity are about 12 years.
Godfrey did caution prospective buyers that it wasn’t a good idea to smoke on them. On a positive note, he added that if buyers did smoke and a hot ember melted a hole in the vinyl, they won’t have to worry about a fire.
The drawback that many people were most concerned with was the weight of a filled water bed. Cowles’ story mentions a report of a “balcony falling off the side of a building because it was not able to support the water bed’s weight.”Godfrey said because the weight is evenly distributed, the load per square inch was not that great. The thing most people seem to agree on is how comfortable a water bed is.
Owners can customize their water beds to achieve individual comfort zones by regulating the amount of water put into them. Even a firm water bed will provide a person with a gentle, floating sensation.
Roger Thomas, a UVa student from Virginia Beach, was sold on his water bed.
“It’s just like you’d imagine lying on nine inches of water would be,” Thomas told Cowles. “It’s just sheer comfort — like floating on an air mattress in the ocean.
“It’s fluid, rhythmic and gives with your body, yet it’s very firm.”
Water beds continued to enjoy a strong market during the 1970s and ’80s. In more recent years, their popularity has waned somewhat.
This could be due in part to the need to heat them in areas where it gets cold. Keeping a water bed nice and toasty can use more electricity than a refrigerator.
And there’s the hassle of draining and refilling them when they have to be moved. Still, there are plenty of people willing to accept the disadvantages in order to enjoy the pleasure of seemingly floating off into the land of Nod.