Anyone seen a, own a, hear of a "Commun-a-hood?"

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charco68

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I bought an vintage late 50's GE cooktop and oven from someone online, and he threw in this unusual item: A Commun-A-Hood exhaust hood. It doesn't match the GE set (they're turquoise..squee!) plus I don't really have room for it.

But, who in the world developed an exhaust hood with an AM radio and an intercom in it?? C & H Supply in Dallas, Texas did way back in the day...but wow! Anyone have any thoughts on this thing? When they seller described it to me, I thought he might have been high, but here it is! Comments, plz...

PS: Sorry for the pic with my hairy kneecap...it was holding up the hood.

charco68++7-10-2012-15-50-7.jpg
 
Very interesting!

Fascinating hood, sorry I don't have any information about it. However, it seems like an excellent idea.... a hood with an intercom station on board. Not so sure about the headphone jack, though.

Welcome.

(incidentally, hairy male knees are a general, not total, but indeed general favorite around here.)

Lawrence/Maytagbear
 
While our house was being finished in '57 we lived next door in "Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Harold's" house. They were no relation but I called them that. Their house not only had a Communa-Hood in coppertone it had the PUSH BUTTON CONTROLS FOR THE GE SURFACE UNITS! The kitchen also had matching pullout GE DW and Deluxe Combination fridge with LIGHTED freezer! They only came down from Niagra Falls for a couple of months each year so I got to "take care" of the house.
Our house had Westinghouse range and built in oven in Sunny yellow with a front opening Hot Point DW. BUT we had a HUGE Communa-Hood brand built-in intercom. Every room, the front door,garage and pool area all had sub units. It was AM only but you could plug your mono phono in to it. The main panel was 24 inches high, 18 inches wide, It was built into the kitchen wall and ugly as hell! Used to piss dear Ma off by making noises into the sub-stations. Those were the days!
 
"Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Harold's"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Well now we know what C&H stood for.

In the 'intercom' days, Dallas was a yuppie town. North, anyway. It's almost entirely ghetto now. You can't leave so much as an empty soda can outside after dark without it getting stolen.

The 'intercom' novelty only lasted about 10 years, 1956 to 1966 depending where you lived. We had 2 houses with intercoms. I played with them but I don't know ANYone who actually "used" them.
 
Tolivac,
Better yet, as the unit aged you could stand on the terrazzo floor in bare feet and touch any part of the cabinet, especially the phono jack and act as a human moog complete with appropriate dance moves until you let go!
 
Funny, Nutone was also big into fans, hoods, intercoms and even central vacs.

It just does not seem to me that you would get the clearest fidelity to voices over the intercom if you were speaking into the hood while the motor was running. Those cheap fan motors were far from silent. Of course, putting the fan on "HIGH" and flipping every room on to receive the noise might constitute a communal wake up alarm.
 
Intercoms

Still somewhat popular in this country. Our old house actually had a Valet Intercom and Ducted Vacuum (was a rental property, and the tenants used the vac to remove the dog's "land-mines" from sight. Cost a bit of money to get that fixed!)

The intercom had some dodgy wiring or was just not working, since some of the rooms would've make a noise when you tried running the radio to the sub-sets, monitoring the room or speaking to those rooms. There were at least 2 rooms like this. Some of them worked fine though. The front door one was inoperable, apart from a short version of Für Elise being used for the doorbell button (we got to hate that tune during our life at that house!)
 
I have seen and used NuTone intercoms-but NEVER saw one built into a range hood.And as cuffs054 pooints out-touching the thing might make you dance in an interesting,tingly way!wonder if the things radio and amp was tubed or very early solid state?Tubes might survive the heat a vent hood endures,but the solid state may not-esp early SS circuits.Hope the thing had an isolation or power transformer in it to help prevent the excessive dance moves!
 

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