Benjamin Franklin’s Contribution to Fireplace Design
One of the many contributions that Benjamin Franklin made throughout his life was to the use of wood burning stoves and fireplaces. He discovered that when a fireplace is put on the wall of a house, a wall that is an outside wall, with no other rooms behind it, that much of the heat the fireplace provides got lost. He was the one who created the freestanding fireplace, or the firebox, which became known later as the Franklin stove. Franklin was constantly inventing items, and the stove was his way to efficiently heat a room, or a house. His stove was constructed of heavy duty cast iron, which heated up to the maximum temperature, and served to keep the house warm, long after the flames of the fire went out. The only trouble with the first versions of the stoves, was that they had no vents. A Philadelphia scientist named David Rittenhouse created a chimney pipe, that made it possible for the air to move through, and then take the smoke out of the house through this L-shaped chimney.
Not long afterward, the stoves were in use in most of the houses in the United States. Although it was the chimney addtion that made these a successful and viable appliance, Franklin’s name was still used on the stoves. Some houses now, still use these stoves. I find that the heat is more evenly distributed than the modern heaters of today, with forced air heat. They create a warmth that is much more like that of a radiator, than of hot and sometimes very dry air. When I lived in Chicago, we had the option of both a free-standing stove, or the electric modern air heaters, and the only way to really thoroughly warm the house in the middle of the winter, was to use the stove. Not to mention, it created a very cool atmosphere, to walk in from a snow filled city, into the warmth of the fire in the stove.
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