What is the purpose of the heat lamp in the bathroom?
Ever since I first discovered the heat lamp in the ceiling of a hotel bathroom when I was a child, I was fascinated by this oddity. And thirty years later, I still fail to see any purpose for these things. The most plausible explanation I can envision is that this is some poor substitute for a sauna. Although I can't imagine any self-respecting Finn on holiday, no matter how desperate for a sauna, sitting forlornly on the closed lid of a toilet under a red light bulb.
Clearly this "amenity" has fallen out of favor, as I don't see them in hotels built after the early 1990s, and usually only in those older properties that haven't been renovated for decades.
Can someone please provide some historical background on the mysterious hot light bulb?