| OCR Text |
Show c Early Efforts at Making Cook Stoves. Doubtless some form of cooking stove has been used from a very early period. Previous to 1745 the stoves of all kind nsed in America were imported from Holland or Germany, but in that year a stove was invented by Benjamin Franklin that was a great improvement on all that had preceded it. In 1771 he continued his inventions in this line and produced a stove for burning bituminous bitumi-nous coal which consumed its own smoke and another which, after being filled at the top, could be inverted and made to burn from the base. Between 1785 and 1795 several improvements in stoves, ovens, heating and cooking apparatus were made by Count Rumford, and as early as 1798 his soapstone lined ranges had been introduced in New York and were coming gradually into general use. St. Louis Republic. |
