Cooking was performed over an open fire since nearly two million years ago. It is uncertain how fires were started at these times; some hypotheses include the removal of burning branches from wildfires, spark generation through hitting rocks, or accidental lighting through the chipping of stone tools. During the Paleolithic era, approximately 200,000 to 40,000 years ago, primitive hearths were constructed, with stones arranged in a circle shape. Human homes centered around these hearths for warmth and food. Open fires were quite effective; most fires are 30% efficient on average, and heat is distributed positively, with no heat being lost into the body of a stove. An estimated three million people still cook their food today over open fires.
Pottery and other cooking vessels were later placed on open fire; eventually, setting the vessel on a support, such as a base of three stones, resulted in a stove. The three-stone stove is still widely used around the world. In some areas it developed into a U-shaped dried mud or brick enclosure with the opening in the front for fuel and air, sometimes with a second smaller hole at the rear.
In 1642, at Lynn, Massachusetts, the first cast-iron stove was constructed. This stove was little more than a cast-iron box with no grates. In 1735, the Castrol stove, or "stew stove", was developed by French designer Francois Cuvilliés. https://greenhousekitsaustralia.com/product/6kw-harvia-stove-heater/ was the earliest recorded wood-burning stove.[9] Benjamin Franklin designed the "Pennsylvania fireplace" in 1740, which incorporated the fundamental concepts of the heating stove. The Franklin stove used a grate to burn wood and had sliding doors to control the draught, or flow of air, through it. Because of https://greenhousekitsaustralia.com/product/8kw-harvia-stove-heater/ , the stove could be housed in a large fireplace or used free-standing in the middle of a room by connecting it to a chimney. Developed amid a wood shortage, it required one-quarter the quantity of fuel as a regular fireplace and could raise the room temperature more quickly. Throughout North America, the Franklin stove enjoyed widespread adoption, warming farmhouses, city residences, and frontier huts.
In 1795, Count Rumford created a particularly popular version, featuring a single fire source, but allowing for the temperature to be adjusted independently for numerous pots at once, all while heating the space. Its main disadvantage was that it was too large for most residential kitchens. Isaac Orr of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, created the first circular cast-iron stoves with grates for cooking meals on them roughly five years later. The potbellied stove traces its origins to the early 1800s, inspired by the Franklin stove developed twenty years prior. Jordan A. Mott designed the base-burning stove for burning anthracite coal in 1833. In 1834, Philo Stewart created the Oberlin Stove, a small wood-burning cast-iron stove. It was a compact metal kitchen stove that was far more efficient than cooking in a fireplace due to its improved heating capacity and allowance for record cooking durations. It was a major commercial success because it could be formed into desired shapes and forms and could survive temperature fluctuations from hot to cold readily. These iron stoves evolved into specialized cooking machines with chimney flue pipes, oven openings, and water heating