History of Waterbeds

In 1871 the very first waterbed was in use in the town of Elmira, NY for "invalids". This waterbed was very briefly mentioned by famous Mark Twain in his article "A New Beecher Church". This article was published in The New York Times on July 23, 1871. In the article Mark Twain mentioned: "In the infirmary will be kept one or two water-beds (for invalids whose pains will not allow them to be on a less yielding substance) and half a dozen reclining invalid-chairs on wheels. The water-beds and invalid-chairs at present belonging to the church are always in demand, and never out of service." Unfortunately this article did not contain enough information to really determine the form of the beds used.

A few years later a Dr. William Hooper of Portsmouth, England, patented a waterbed. This happened in 1883. He described it in his patent to relieve bed sore pains with his hospital patients. However - Unable to contain the water in the mattress and unable to control its temperature, his invention was a very big marketing failure and it never took off.

The modern waterbed as we know it was created by a man called Charles Hall in 1968. Charles Hall was a design student at San Francisco State University in California, USA. His fellow SFSU students Paul Heckel and Evan Fawkes also contributed a lot of work to the concept of the modern waterbed. Charles Hall originally wanted to make an innovative chair. His first prototype was a vinyl bag with almost 300 pounds of cornstarch, but the final result was extremely uncomfortable.

Then he attempted to fill it with Jell-O, but again this was a big failure. Ultimately, he abandoned the idea of the innovative chair, and finally settled on perfecting a bed. Here he finally succeeded. Trying to get a patent on his invention he failed. Because a waterbed was already described in the novels “Beyond This Horizon” (published in 1942), “Double Star” (published in 1956), and “Stranger in a Strange Land” (published in 1961) by Mr. Robert A. Heinlein, Hall was unable to obtain a patent on his creation. Even without being a patented invention the waterbed took off and became a big time market player.