![Working and living in the same place: view of an Aargau farmhouse parlour around 1840.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/blick-in-eine-aargauer-bauernstube-um-1840-300x225.jpg)
From cottage industries to the home office
Doing your job within your own four walls isn’t a phenomenon of the computer age. But while the home office in most cases entails a better quality of life, the type of working from home that many people did before industrialisation was an exploitative form of working.
![In the Middle Ages people often worked and slept in the same place, like these mining workers in a 16th-century depiction on the mountain altar in St Anne’s Church in Annaberg-Buchholz.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/annaberger-bergaltar-259x300.jpg)
![Two women at work in the parlour: one at the spinning wheel, the other at the loom, about 1890.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/zwei-frauen-in-der-stube-an-der-arbeit-gbe-127906-lm-797577-300x209.jpg)
![View into a weaving cellar in the Canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden. Print by Johannes Schiess, around 1850.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/blick-in-einen-webkeller-im-kanton-appenzell-ausserrhoden-dig-3612-lm-8527-300x217.jpg)
![Appenzell farmhouse in Rehetobel (Canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden) dating from the 19th century.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/appenzeller-bauernhaus-300x225.jpg)
![Boy working at home on a spinning wheel, around 1940.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/bub-bei-der-heimarbeit-am-spinnrad-um-1940-roh-4022-lm-14100313-225x300.jpg)
![Girl making socks, around 1940.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/madchen-bei-der-herstellung-von-socken-um-1940-roh-4028-lm-14100319-225x300.jpg)
![A secretary at work, around 1950.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/eine-sekretarin-an-ihrem-arbeitsplatz-um-1950-dig-41780-lm-10008925-300x246.jpg)
How cubicles, telecommuting, personal computers, and email changed the way we work. Harvard Business Review / YouTube