DJ Trava

Posts Tagged ‘gas inserts’

Black smudges on the roofs of caves suggest hints about the first use of fires by early humans, scattered across Africa and Europe.  As the world progressed, fire obtained through hits of lightning transformed into man-made fires in stone hearths, which eventually led to clay and ceramic ovens.  Over the centuries, as humans developed irrigation techniques for agriculture, they simultaneously developed their control of fire.  What’s the history of fireplaces and stoves?  How far have we come over the centuries?  Here’s a quick look.

The first recorded instance of a stove was in 1490, in Alsace, France.  Everything about it, including the flue, was made of bricks and tiles.  Later, a couple of centuries later, cast iron stoves came into play.  In 1728, a lot of these stoves were made.  The first ones were designed in Germany and known as five-plate stoves or Jamb stoves.  A bit later, Benjamin Franklin created the Franklin stove, an iron furnace stove, marking a huge leap forward in stove technology.  Even later, a man named Frans Wilhelm Lindquist came up with the kerosene stove, which was sootless.  In 1833, one Jordon Mott invented the Base Burner, a stove which contained ventilation in order to let the coal burn better.  It was considered the first practical coal stove.  Only a few years earlier, James Sharp had invented a gas stove, and this particular stove was the first successful one in the marketplace.  In a further move away from fire, a company known as the Carpenter Electric Heating Manufacturing Company is credited as inventing in 1891 the electric stove and then, only five years later, William Hadaway picked up the patent for said stove.  Fourteen years later, in 1910, Hadaway  invented a toaster for Westinghouse, a kind of toaster-cooker, a forerunner, if you will of the modern toaster oven.

In the 20th Century, coal stoves and gas stoves proliferated, with top burners and interior ovens.  In the late 20s and 30s, electric stoves competed with the gas stoves, despite the fact that the electric stoves had been around since the 1890s.  Finally, in 1946, Dr. Percy Spencer created an incredible advancement, the microwave stove.  It would be years before people everywhere had one in their homes.

Finally, today, over the last twenty years or more, the fireplace and home stoves have changed again, with the more efficient gas inserts and wood inserts.  More recently, we’ve seen the evolution of the fire place and stove expand even further, with the ventless gas fireplace.  Over time, we’ve seen fire move out of the cave, harnessed by stone, clay, iron and steel, eventually moving to the point where a fireplace may literally hang on the wall, without the need of a chimney or a flue.  It’ll be fascinating to see where humans will take their use of fire next.