Apr 09 2012
The Softside Waterbed Today
The waterbed was one of the earliest attempts to make the way that people sleep a more comfortable and healing experience. The idea for a softer sleeping surface was first brought into being by a Scottish physician in the early 1800s. This physician, Neil Arnott, did a lot of work with invalids and he was concerned about the prevalence of bedsores. The reasons for the occurrence of bedsores had been known for several generations, but the basic treatment that is still used today–regular rotation of the patient–was still not entirely effective. These sores can be extremely painful when they get serious, and even small ones can be very difficult to heal.
Doctor Arnott wondered if having a softer surface to lie on would help reduce the occurrence of bedsores, so he began exploring ways of making a softer bed. Finally he came up with the idea of using water. A canvas covered in heavy tar, the same used to seal ocean-going vessels, would be stretched over the surface of a tub filled with water. Soft blankets and pads would be placed on top of this to add a little extra softness. This bed proved a comfortable sleeping surface, and forms of this early waterbed were used in hospitals for the next hundred and fifty years. The idea for a marketable waterbed for the masses wasn’t visited until the 1960s. A San Francisco State University student working on a design project in 1968 wanted to create the softest chair ever. He had several ideas for filling, but none of them had a true longevity.
After a time, he switched to creating a sleeping surface instead, and eventually came up with a large plastic bladder filled with water. This proved surprisingly comfortable because the water conforms to all the curves of the body and equally supports them, eliminating the unequal pressure on joints that makes standard mattresses uncomfortable. A few years later, this student was able to market his mattress and waterbeds became a national phenomenon. Despite their popularity, there were a few general complaints with the waterbed of the 1970s. The first and most prevalent was that people would experience seasickness while lying on the bed. This was because any movement would set the surface of the mattress into a series of waves. This reason alone prevented many people from purchasing a waterbed mattress.
Other complaints included that the surface of the mattress felt cold and too hard, and that an entire waterbed set–which included a large frame–weighed far too much to be a viable purchase for older homes and apartments. The softside waterbed of today is an answer to many of the concerns that so many people complained about. Instead of being a single compartment of water, a softside waterbed mattress features a network of connected passages filled with water. The tubes inside the mattress prevent the mattress from waving, and they also make it easier to warm up the several hundred gallons of water needed to fill one mattress. These two elements made the new softside waterbed very attractive to previously skeptical customers when it was first released, allowing the softside waterbed to be still attractive today.
A last benefit of a softside waterbed versus an older-style model is the finished bed’s weight. Many softside mattresses contain small pockets of air as part of their inner tubing construction. This reduces the amount of water needed to fill the mattress, making them far lighter than their predecessors. The more rigid construction of the mattress itself means that the mattress can be used on its own, without the heavy frame necessary for older waterbeds. All of these factors make the softside waterbed mattress an option for people living in apartments and older homes, people who before may not have been able to enjoy the benefits of sleeping on a waterbed.
