The first historical record of a stove being built, refers to a stove built in 1490, in Alsace, France. This stove was made entirely of brick and tile, including the flue. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) invented the iron furnace stove or 'Franklin Stove'.
Frans Wilhelm Lindqvist designed the first sootless kerosene stove.
Jordan Mott invented the first practical coal stove in 1833. Mott's stove was called the baseburner. The stove had ventilation to burn the coal efficiently.
British inventor, James Sharp patented a gas stove in 1826, the first successful gas stove to appear on the market.
The Carpenter Electric Heating Manufacturing Co. invented an electric stove in 1891. On June 30, 1896, William Hadaway was issued the first patent for the electric stove. In 1910, William Hadaway went on to design the first toaster made by Westinghouse, a horizontal combination toaster-cooker.
Second Industrial Revolution Stoves
The coal stove was cylindrical and made of heavy cast iron with a hole in the top, which was then enclosed by an iron ring. Gas stoves were found in most households by the 1920s with top burners and interior ovens. It was not until the late 1920s and early 1930s that electric stoves began to compete with gas stoves, however, electric stoves were available as early as the 1890s.
Microwave Ovens
The microwave oven was a by-product of another technology. It was during a radar-related research project around 1946 that Dr. Percy Spencer, an engineer with the Raytheon Corporation, noticed something very unusual.
Gas and electric stoves or any stoves use natural gas to provide heat.
All previous stoves were fuled by wood (or other biofuel), charcoal, or coal. The first gas stoves were developed already in the 1820s, but these remained isolated experiments. (James Sharp in Northampton, England, patented a gas stove in 1826 and opened a gas stove factory in 1836.) At the world fair in London in 1851, a gas stove was shown, but only in the 1880s did this technology start to become a commercial success. The main factor for this delay was the slow growth of the gas pipe network. The first gas stoves were rather unwieldy, but soon the oven was integrated into the base and the size reduced to fit in better with the rest of the kitchen furniture. In the 1910s, producers started to enamel their gas stoves for easier cleaning. A high-end gas stove called the AGA cooker was invented in 1922 by Swedish Nobel prize winner Gustaf Dalén. It is considered to be the most efficient design and is a much sought after kitchen "must have" in certain circles—despite the hefty price tag.
The AGA, and similar products such as the Rayburn Range are examples of always-on stoves which continue to burn fuel even when cooking is not being performed. Stoves (or ranges as they are also known) such as these are often used instead of boilers or furnaces to supply hot water and central heating to the rest of the house.
First attempts at building electrical stoves were made in the 1880s, but its real debut was at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, where an electrified model kitchen was shown. But like the gas stove, the electrical stove had a slow start, partly due to the unstable technology, and partly because first cities and town needed to be electrified. By the 1930s, the technology had matured and the electrical stove started to slowly replace the gas stove, especially in domestic kitchens.
The electrical stove technology has developed in several successive generations:
The first technology used resistor heating coils which heated iron hotplates, on top of which the pots were placed. Though the technology is slowly fading into obsolescence, coil ranges still provide the best durability out of all electric cooktop implementations.
In the 1970s, glass-ceramic cooktops started to appear. Glass-ceramic has a very low heat conduction coefficient, but lets infrared radiation pass very well. Electrical heating coils or infrared halogen lamps are used as heating elements. Because of its physical characteristics, the cooktop heats quicker, there is less afterheat, and only the plate heats up while the adjacent surface remains cool. Also, these cooktops have a smooth surface and are thus easier to clean, but they only work with flat-bottomed cookware and are markedly more expensive.
A third technology, developed first for professional kitchens, but today also entering the domestic market are induction stoves. These heat the cookware directly through electromagnetic induction and thus require pots and pans with ferromagnetic bottoms. Induction stoves also often have a glass-ceramic surface.
The iron hotplate technology is still in widespread use, although newly equipped kitchens nowadays usually get a stove using one of the later technologies.
Electrical oven technology has also advanced: in the convection oven, a stream of hot air is used for heating food instead of the heat produced by coils directly as in a conventional electrical oven.
Gas and electric stoves are the most common today in western countries. Both are equally mature and safe, and the choice between the two is largely a matter of personal preference and preexisting utility outlets: if a house has no gas supply, adding one just to be able to run a gas stove is an expensive endeavor. In particular, professional chefs often prefer gas cooktops, for they allow them to control the heat more finely and more quickly. On the other hand, chefs often prefer electric ovens because they tend to heat food more evenly. Today's major brands offer both gas and electric stoves, and many also offer dual-fuel stoves combining gas cooktops and electric ovens.
Ovens and stoves, throughout history, have one thing in common, they will burn the person who comes in contact with their hot metal surfaces, for instance, the oven rack's front edge. Devices to protect the hands, such as oven gloves, have been developed, but need to be used consistently, to be effective; so people still get burned. Recently, a device has been invented by Burt Shulman of Wappingers Falls, NY, called the Cool Touch Oven Rack Guard, which is a fabric strip that attaches along the front edge of the oven rack and stays in the oven. If a person touches it, even at 500 deg. F., they will not be burned. - The fabric is made from a modern synthetic fiber called Nomex - which can withstand 500 deg. F. temperatures and has both low thermal conductivity and thermal mass. - These material properties reduce the heat transferred to the skin, during the "touch', so no burn results. See independent
Modern corn, pellet or biofuel stove
A corn stove is a type of pellet stove which is a type of biofuel stove. The shelled dry kernel of corn, also called a corn pellet, creates as much heat as a wood pellet but generates more ash. "Corn pellet stoves and wood pellet stoves look the same from the outside. Since they are highly efficient, they don't need a chimney; instead they can be vented outdoors by a four-inch pipe through an outside wall and so can be located in any room in the home." Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy
A pellet stove uses small, biological fuel pellets which are renewable and very clean-burning. Home heating using a pellet stove is an alternative currently used throughout the world, with an extremely fast growth rate in Europe. The pellets are made of renewable material –- typically wood sawdust or off-cuts. There are currently more than half a million homes in North America using pellet stoves for heat, and probably a similar number in Europe. The pellet stove typically uses a feed screw to transfer pellets from a storage hopper to a combustion chamber. Air is provided for the combustion by an electric blower. The ignition is automatic, using a stream of air heated by an electrical element. The rotation speed of the feeder and the fan speeds can be varied to modulate the heat output.