"Furthermore, bedrooms, living rooms, family rooms don't actually require a lighting outlet at all when a switched receptacle is installed."
More accurately, the switched receptacle IS the lighting outlet. Remember, except for rooms with applaince circuits, receptacles are (or were) considered lighting outlets.
The only room that "required" electricity for other than lighting loads for many years was the kitchen, later the laundry (sound famalair?) Other rooms had only lighting loads.
In the "beginning", electrified homes had a single 30-amp circuit (one hot, one neutral - both fused) for a single pendant light socket in each room, switched at the socket.
Remember those adapter devices that screwed into a socket, took a bulb on the other end, and had a pair of receptacles in the sides, and often their own pull-chain switch?
Those were one of the first electrical devices widely sold, which now allowed "new-fangled" appliances to be powered. Unfortunately, most appliances were high current heating loads.
Thus the NFPA was born, and begat the NEC.
