Mattress History - How They Have Evolved

Early man, unlike us, did not have or need a bedroom to go to sleep. Fallen leaves made up his bed and animal skins, complete with the resident insects, served as a blanket. So it goes without saying that we are indeed lucky that the mattress has evolved into one of the more important pieces of furniture in our house.

In early times, any material you piled into the corner of a room (or even a cave) served as a mattress. It's purpose was simply to protect whoever happened to be sleeping there from the hard ground. Leaves, straw and even animal skins all served this purpose. Those who read the Bible know that a stone served as a pillow for Jacob. If your plans include wrestling with an angel most of the night, this might be okay, but certainly it wasn't very comfortable.

Enter those enterprising pharaohs of Egypt. They came up with a better idea. Somebody decided it would be a good idea to raise up a platform made of wood. This, they reasoned, would be ideal for sleeping. And in fact it did protect them better from snakes and whatever other critters would be crawling around. It did not however, do much for comfort. And although the pharaohs slept up high, the more common amongst the Egyptians still slept tightly together on piles of palm leaves that served as mattresses

It took the Romans to figure out there were more comfortable ways to sleep. In fact, credit them with coming up with the first water beds of sorts. They would sleep in tubs of water (don't try this at home) and when the water would get cold, they would move. A swaying hammock would be next, or perhaps a sack stuffed with anything from feathers to sticks to wood to straw. Then came the Renaissance, and with it, the introduction of better materials. Velvet and silk were used to cover more harsh ticking.

Things changed very little with the mattress over the next centuries, but the bed frame evolved. Have you ever heard the term "sleep tight"? It originated from the fact that ropes were woven in a tight lattice pattern. These ropes would hold the mattress with a bit more give, this giving the sleeper a bit more comfort.

Finally, major advances took place in the late 18th and early 19th century. These sleep advances included the stuffed cotton mattress and the iron bed frame also appeared. No longer were beds infested with bugs, thus getting rid of a problem what plagued sleep deprived men and women for centuries.

A remarkable invention occurred in 1865. A patent was given to the first inner spring mattress. Most modern mattresses are patterned after this model. But the new idea was slow to catch on, and the innerspring mattress complete with box spring was not dominant in the sleep industry until the 1930's. At this point, technology boomed.

The 40's and 50's saw the appearance of futons and foam rubber, and the waterbed and adjustable bed was invented in the 1960's. The 1980's brought in the first airbed. In the 1990's the bedding industry and the buying public decided that size mattered, and the queen size bed overtook the twin as the best selling size.

As we've hit a new century, Tempurpedic beds and memory foam have been introduced on practically every type of mattress currently available.

It sure beats sleeping on the ground with a rock as a pillow. We've come a long way baby. And fortunately, as people have evolved so too has the mattress. We can now sleep in comfort on whatever our money can buy.