centralheating

It was delightful and satisfying to come into the spacious and cozy livingroom, filled with overstuffed easychairs and comfortable couches, warmed by the most efficient of centralheating systems or to use one of the perfectly appointed bathrooms whose every fixture was the best money could buy and recall the dank stone floors and walls leading up to a mammoth and -- from a thermal point of view -- perfectly useless fireplace flanked by the coatsofarms of deadandgone gentry who were content to shuffle out on inclement mornings to answer nature's calls in chilly outhouses.

Greener Than You Think Ward Moore 1940