Hired Girl

By Jerry Pournelle

May 1, 2006

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Robert Heinlein's novel The Door Into Summer made a number of technological predictions. One of them was a series of household robots. The first one was called "Hired Girl," and it cleaned floors. Although Heinlein thought of it as a very simple robot, we still don't have anything quite like it.

There are automated vacuum cleaners, and friends who have tried them are enthusiastic. I don't have one of those, but I do have Brookstone's Scooba.

Brookstone's Scooba at work.

Scooba mops floors. I was skeptical about it before I tried it. In our case, the kitchen and breakfast room are connected, and the breakfast room table isn't easily removed: Scooba would have to clean around the table legs. I did stack the chairs.

To use Scooba, you charge the battery, fill the tanks with cleaning liquid, set it in the middle of the kitchen floor, and turn it on. Then you get out of the way. An hour later, your floor is clean.

It's not entirely dry, or at least mine wasn't, but it only took a couple of minutes with a Swiffer mop to get it dry. Actually, I just used the mop to clear a path so we could get to the coffee, and let the rest of the floor dry on its own. Then I emptied the dirty water tank, rinsed it all out, and put it away. It took me about five minutes to set up Scooba, and less time to clean it and put it away; and the floor was clean. Not just clean by my standards. Roberta agrees.

It's not Heinlein's Hired Girl, but if you hate mopping floors and you like robots, you'll like this. It really does work.

Let There Be Light

Most of my product photographs are done here at Chaos Manor, and I have learned from experience what all professional photographers know: the lighting is more important than the camera.

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