Home appliances, any of numerous and varied electric, electromechanical, or gas-powered devices introduced mainly in the 20th century to save labour and time in the household. Collectively, their effect on industrial society has been to eliminate the drudgery and drastically reduce the time long associated with housekeeping and homemaking. Home appliances have had little or no effect outside the world’s urban communities, but within these communities they have had a profound, even revolutionary, impact in social and economic terms.