By 1986, they had 20 percent of the bed market. Everyone wanted one. And then, as suddenly as they'd become cool, they became lame. Super lame. Like, mustache and shoulder pad lame.

Maybe it's time waterbeds made a comeback. Hall points out that he never intended for his invention to be so deeply associated with the icky-sexy '70s. He had bigger plans.

He wanted to change the way people thought about and used their furniture. At the time, Hall thought too much furniture design focused on style, and he wanted to shift the emphasis to comfort. He began by creating furniture that would eliminate pressure points and use heat to relax muscles. Hall's first crack at a product, a vinyl bag filled with 300 pounds of liquid corn-starch, failed: it reduced pressure points, but engulfed anyone who sat in it. Next, Hall thought Jell-o might solve the problem, but it still wasn't the right temperature or consistency.

So he moved on, working on the object we spend the most time in. At the age of 24, Hall designed the modern waterbed: a vinyl water-filled bladder equipped with a temperature control device meant to synchronize with human body temperature. "I designed a serious sleep product," he says.

It's not hard to believe Hall. In the late 1960s, the design department was a hotbed of alternative technology. It was known for what historian Andrew Kirk modestly called a "free-form atmosphere." For example, in '67, famed designer J. Baldwin was there "rebuilding a giant camera from a U-2 spy plane he had purchased at a military surplus sale for thirty dollars." (One day, countercultural icon Stewart Brand showed up in a toga and a top hat to befriend Baldwin. The pair worked on a series of publications together, including the National Book Award Winning Whole Earth Catalog.) San Francisco State was a good place to be doing weird stuff with the things of modern life.

But perhaps it was inevitable that his work would be taken up by people intent on doing more in bed than sleeping. Hall's design was completed in the year of the "summer of love," after all.

Hall wasn't the first to think about how nice it might be to sleep on heated water. In the early 1800s, to relieve patient bedsores, Dr. Neil Arnot created a 'hydrostatic bed' by covering a warm bath with India-rubber cloth and then sealing it with varnish to prevent leaks. In 1893 a British physician, Dr. Portsmouth, patented a similar invention. These early incarnations couldn't really contain heat or water, so they never garnered commercial success.

Then, in the early 20th century, Robert Heinlein's science fiction novels prophesied the modern waterbed, but he never actually built the bed.

I designed the waterbed during years as a bed patient in the middle thirties; a pump to control water level, side supports to permit one to float rather than simply lying on a not very soft water filled mattress. Thermostatic control of temperature, safety interfaces to avoid all possibility of electric shock, waterproof box to make a leak no more important than a leaky hot water bottle rather than a domestic disaster, calculation of floor loads (important!), internal rubber mattress and lighting, reading, and eating arrangements--an attempt to design the perfect hospital bed by one who had spent too damn much time in hospital beds.



Regardless of Heinlein's dreams, it wasn't until vinyl became widely used that a marketable waterbed was possible. Discovered in the 1800s, the plastic's first commercial uses didn't come along until the 1930s, when it was used to make shock absorber seals and synthetic tires. These successes, combined with the rubber shortage during World War II, led to further development. By 1968 vinyl's capabilities had expanded and diversified, providing Hall with a durable fabric for his bed.