In the past, there was no clear standard for kitchen countertop heights. Some countertops in places like Sweden and the United States were very low. Preparing meals in the kitchen often required bending over and hunching. The reason may be that people with expertise in ergonomics were not interested in kitchens… until Christine Frederick standardized kitchen countertops.
Christine was very interested in Taylorism (Scientific Management). Taylor improved efficiency in manufacturing by studying workflows and other means, the most well-known of which is the assembly line division of labor, which is controversial. However, Taylor’s method of studying how to improve efficiency by statistically analyzing the time of each process and other experiments is a good one.
Christine was also very interested in kitchen efficiency, so she opened the Applecroft Home Experiment Station based on Taylorism in her home to study ways to increase kitchen efficiency. In addition to studying the efficient use of various household appliances and food, Christine also designed a very dominant model kitchen.
The old family kitchen was composed of various scattered parts, or it should be called modular. And Christine turned everything into a whole, everything was embedded, gas stoves, cupboards, sinks and other kitchen supplies were all on one plane. This style is unified, and the height is also ergonomic (at that time it was 31 inches, and later increased to 36 inches). This design became the basic solution for future kitchens.
PS: Perhaps because men also began to enter the kitchen, and the average height increased, Japan added 85 and 90 cm heights to the originally popular 80 cm standard kitchen countertop height, for a total of three heights.
PS 2: The sink is as high as the gas stove, which is actually a bit uncomfortable to use, because you usually need to bend over. There is a design that makes the sink 5 cm higher than the gas stove to avoid bending over, which should be a good idea.