"Fifty million people purchased the original waterbeds now they can experience unsurpassed comfort in the updated Afloat waterbed," said Hall who has second patent pending on Afloat. It also features an energy-saving insulation system and a machine-washable cover that lets you keep your mattress clean and fresh. A temperature-controlled surface allows one to dial in his or her individual preference. Hall said the new waterbed looks like a conventional mattress, but that is as far as the comparison goes. "As a result, we created a better bed that is easy to get in and out of, completely waveless, and has an even more compliant surface that contours to your body, eliminating pressure points that cause discomfort." "After patenting the original waterbed nearly 50 years ago and having a great night's sleep ever since, I decided to update and redesign the original using materials that weren't previously available," Hall said. ![]() In 2018, Hall re-invented his waterbed, named Afloat. This week, the U.S. I think there would be a lot happier couples, a whole lot less aches and pains.FORT LAUDERDALE, FL / ACCESSWIRE / Octo/ In 1968, Charles Hall invented the waterbed and three years later was awarded U.S. It's almost like being a little kid again. And while it's still unclear if Americans are ready to fall back in love with the waterbed, for those considering it, Katherine Johnson has a message.įor someone who never been on a waterbed, what they're missing out on, beside a good night's sleep, is "just fun. Hall's new-and-improved mattress had its grand debut this year at Koenig's store, now called City Furniture, in Florida. Luke Burbank interviews waterbed inventor Charlie Hall. "I've been fighting the urge this entire interview not to doze off, which I guess is kind of a rave review," he said. She slept on the waterbed with three other teenage girls, and two cats!" Doyen laughed.ĭespite the Johnson family's enthusiasm, waterbed sales have tanked since their high-point in the '80s, and that's something Charlie Hall and his business partner Koenig hope to change, with their noticeably less "jiggly" version, called Afloat. "Everybody in the family also loves the waterbed. Everybody knows it about her," Doyen said. Luke Burbank tries to find his sea legs on Katherine Johnson's waterbed.īurbank asked Yvonne Doyen, "Would you say that it's one of the more notable things about your mom, is just how much she loves that waterbed?" "That's when I go back East to Pittsburgh, and I lay in bed with my granddaughters and we talk about the waterbed, and how we wish we were on the waterbed!" laughed Johnson. In the last 30 years, the longest she's been away from her waterbed is two weeks. In fact, by the 1980s more than one in five of all beds sold were waterbeds.Īnd the biggest fan of the water bed? That might be Katherine Johnson, of Mesa, Arizona. "At one time we were the largest seller of beds in South Florida, and we just sold waterbeds," Koenig said. He says when people eventually fell for the beds, they fell hard. ![]() "The mattress companies that we competed with, Sealy and Simmons, those folks pretty much disregarded us to start with," said Keith Koenig, who started selling the beds in the 1970s with his brother at their store, Waterbed City, in South Florida. Coil springs were big, until waterbeds came along."ĭespite this, it actually took awhile to convince the wider public to sleep on a bag of water – and it took even longer to convince the mattress industry. Coil springs came around, and that was a big innovation. But that's the way the bedding business was until, like, 1800s. And then in the Middle Ages they moved up into something off the floor, wood rack frame around and ropes underneath tying it together. And if you're a good hunter you put in a skin or a pelt. "You put straw in there, you put leaves in there. "Beds long ago were, like, indentations in the floor of the cave," he said. To hear Hall tell it, it was the first substantial reimagining of a mattress in at least a hundred years.
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