When was stoves invented

Though sometimes connected to the chimney mass, such ranges might also be given their own space. The breakthrough idea was a flat top perforated by round ports of different sizes that opened to the fire below, into which the cook would lower Rumford-designed pots and pans, similar to the operation of some institutional ranges of today.

Cast iron seems to have appeared in later versions for tops and firebox doors, and the same kitchen might also include another Rumford innovation: an iron drum with a door that was built into the hearth masonry and called the Rumford Roaster. The growth of American coal and iron mining in the s made cast iron the wonder material of the 19th century and led to a prolific industry in making stoves for cooking as well as heating.

Cast iron could take the repeated temperature swings of hot and cold, and it was an ideal medium for casting into complex, prefabricated parts, as well as for decorative surface ornament. Early metal stoves imported in large numbers from Holland and England came in a variety of boxy designs, but by the s a number of basic stove types—used for laundry, heating, and cooking—had been worked out and were being manufactured widely in America.

Castle Tucker in Wicasset, Maine, is an museum house preserved to show its appearance in the late 19th century, when even an upscale kitchen was little more than a wood-burning cookstove garnished by a few sticks of functional furniture. Whatever their use, old stoves were designed to burn wood, but after the Civil War, coal-burning designs came on the scene.

While stoves made for cooking as well as heating might be retrofitted to exhaust out an existing hearth and flue, in the best situations they were connected by an umbilical metal stove pipe to a new kind of chimney that was smaller in flue diameter to enhance the draw for the stove. In pres houses, where there might be only a large central chimney and open cooking hearth, whole new kitchen ells were often built just to accommodate the radically different range.

Always pioneers in the use of gas, English inventors had been experimenting with cooking by gas as early as the s, but it took the maturing of the gas lighting industry to extend the notion to cooking in America. In the 19th century, gas was made from bituminous coal and was primarily an illuminant used to power street and indoor lights. Though gas cooking had found a place in England by the s, and range manufacturers were beginning to ship their product overseas, in America gas was considered too expensive a fuel to be burned for cooking not to mention the source of an after-taste in some minds.

Two ranges are the main course of the kitchen at Maymont in Richmond, Virginia. The hood over the coal-burner is evidence of how much heat these units produce. After , though, gas companies were seeing electric power companies nibble away at their bread-and-butter business —lighting—so they turned to the kitchen as the source of a new market.

Since gas ranges had no need for the heavy, cast iron box of a wood- or coal-burning range, they could be built in much lighter and more compact forms. Plus gas ranges gave off much less excess heat and had no need for a chimney, making them ideal for the new, smaller kitchens of houses like bungalows. One of the iconic images of the s kitchen is the special gas cabinet range, with its distinctive barrel-door warming oven on top.

Designed for constant use by large families or boarding houses, these ranges combined three or more broiling and baking ovens with multiple burners. These cooking areas naturally caused people to gather as they were the primary source of heat, light, safety and, of course, food. The smoke and soot created from the fires were a huge problem until the 16th century, when chimneys became widely used in homes.

With a chimney, smoke was drawn up and out of the great hall, making it easier to breath and easier to create large cooking fires in fireplaces. Economic trends and politics had a major influence on the design and function of the kitchen.

Technological advancements were constant, most of which aimed to reduce labor and time. In the 18th Century, the stoves were fueled by wood. Metal stoves came into use in the 18th century. An early and famous example of a metal stove is the Franklin stove, invented by Benjamin Franklin in It had a labyrinthian path for hot exhaust gases to escape, allowing heat to enter the room instead of going up the chimney. However, this stove was designed only for heating, not for cooking.

The industrial revolution encouraged new inventions, cheaper prices, and new ways of economic and ergonomic efficiency. The most common stove for heating in the industrial world for almost a century and a half was the coal-burning. Modern stoves are typically considered a basic appliance in homes in developed nations. Along with the refrigerator, a stove is typically located in the kitchen room. Many modern stoves typically have from three to six burners or hotplates of various sizes and power levels, an oven, and knobs for controlling heat on burners, which may be located on the backsplash, on the cooktop, or on the front of the stove closest to one's hips.

Middle to high-end models also may feature locking mechanisms for the oven door, convection cooking, automatic cleaning mechanisms that raise the oven temperature to over degrees Celsius degrees Fahrenheit and reduce accumulated food spills to ash, one or more timers, a digital display, and may even be programmable such that they start and stop heating at preset times.

In Europe , the history of the kitchen stove begins in earnest in the 18th century. Before, people cooked over open fires fuelled by wood , which first were on the floor or on low masonry constructions. In the Middle Ages , waist-high brick-and-mortar hearths and the first chimneys appeared, so that one didn't have to kneel or sit anymore to cook.

The fire was lit on top of that construction; the space underneath was used to store and dry wood. Cooking was done mainly in cauldrons hung above the fire or placed on trivets.

The heat was regulated by placing the cauldron higher or lower above the fire. Open fire has three major disadvantages that prompted already 16th century inventors to look for improvements: it is dangerous, produces a lot of smoke, and the heat efficiency is poor. Attempts were made to enclose the fire to make better use of the heat it generated and thus reduce the wood consumption. A first step was the fire chamber : the fire was enclosed on three sides by brick-and-mortar walls, covered by an iron plate.

This technique also caused a change in the kitchenware used for cooking, for it required flat-bottomed pots instead of cauldrons. It is also known as a stew stove. Towards the end of the 18th century, the design was refined by hanging the pots in holes through the top iron plate, thus improving heat efficiency even more.

Chinese and Japanese civilisations had discovered the principle of the closed stove much earlier. These stoves were fired by wood or charcoal through a hole in the front. In both designs, pots were placed over or hung into holes at the top of the knee-high construction. Raised kamados were developed in Japan during the Edo period - In the 18th century the first iron stoves appeared.

An early example is the Franklin stove , a wood burning stove said to have been invented by Benjamin Franklin in It had a labyrinthine path for hot exhaust gases to escape, thus allowing heat to enter the room instead of going up the chimney.

The Franklin stove, however, was designed for heating, not for cooking. Benjamin Thompson at the turn to the 19th century was among the first to present a working iron kitchen stove.

His Rumford stove used one fire to heat several pots that were also hung into holes so that they could be heated from the sides, too. It was even possible to regulate the heat individually for each hole.

His stove was designed for large canteen or castle kitchens, though. It would take another 30 years until the technology had been refined and the size of the iron stove been reduced enough for domestic use.

Stewart's Oberlin stove was a much more compact iron stove, patented in the U.