MINNEAPOLIS — Honeywell has begun the 50th anniversary celebration of one of the world's most well-known home comfort products — The Round® thermostat — with a contest inviting consumers to share stories about the little things that make a comfortable home. Honeywell will reward four winning submissions, from childhood memories to stories of present-day family traditions, by awarding "home comfort makeovers" valued at $5,000 each.

The Round thermostat is part of a Smithsonian Institution collection of pioneering designs. In 1953, it was a home-comfort breakthrough because it could maintain a home's temperature within one degree of the setting; other thermostats at the time could do no better than nine degrees of variation, says Honeywell.

"The demand for more sophisticated home-comfort technologies is a repeat of what occurred in 1953, when The Round thermostat arrived and created higher expectations toward controlling home environments," said Mark Winston, vice president and general manager of Honeywell's North American Homes business. "At that time, the home comfort standards were about gaining more precise control of air temperature. Today, for a variety of reasons — including progress in home construction techniques — we also expect precise control of indoor air quality."