Stove
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Stove. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a well known household necessity. Cast iron stoves were made in Alsace, Germany, as early, it is thought, as 1490; but prior to the eighteenth century European heating stoves were ordinarily large tiled affairs. . The Nuremberg stove required hours to become heated and hours more to cool off. In fact the high earthenware stove is still in use in Germany and Russia. In the latter country the peasants sleep on it for warmth. The American colonists depended on open fireplaces and brick ovens. Pots were hung over an open fire in the fireplace by a crane, an iron rod hinged to the wall so as to swing to and fro. The pots and kettles were suspended from the crane by S-shaped pothooks. Potatoes were roasted in the hot ashes. Bread was baked in a covered pot swung over the fire, or else in a brick oven with an iron door. In case of the latter the oven was first heated by building a fire inside of it. When the dough was ready to bake, the coals and ashes were removed from the oven, the loaves placed inside, and the door closed again. Baking day was an event in the household. In place of warming churches by a stove or furnace the colonists expected each old lady to be provided with a foot-stove or foot-warmer, such as are carried nowadays on a cold drive. A common form of foot-stove was a small sheet iron box, well encased. It was provided with a shovelful of live coals from the fireplace and was carried to church by a bail. A heating stove with an open front was invented by Dr. Franklin in 1744. Box stoves of six iron plates, a top, a bottom, two sides, a rear, and a front door date from 1752. Attachments for baking, holes for kettles and frying pans were afterthoughts. The cooking stove superseded the fireplace about 1819. A history of the various improvements and patents would fill volumes. The modern wood heater is a combination of cast iron and sheet iron. The more expensive cooking ranges are built of steel plates. Coal stoves are provided with mica plates for greater cheerfulness. Stoves are manufactured in no less than twenty-five states. Ten states manufacture stoves to the value of over a million dollars a year, but the American industry may be said to center in Detroit. The annual output for the United States in 1900 was valued at $35,446,600. See Fire ; Heating; Ventilating; Fireplace
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
in former times, a room or place artificially heated, such as a bath, a hot-house, etc. In modern usage, an apparatus in which a fire is made for the purpose of warming a room or house, or for cooking, or for other purposes. They are generally made of iron, sometimes of brick or tiles, or slabs of stone, and are of various forms, according to the heating medium used. On the continent of Europe stoves are generally of earthenware, and are frequently constructed mainly of tiles.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's in 1910 could still describe the stove as "a well known household necessity" made in twenty-five states with the industry centered in Detroit; that industry is gone, and Detroit's giant stove works closed in the mid-20th century. The fuel changed too: gas ranges spread widely in the 1920s and 30s, electric ranges after them, and the microwave oven (sold from the late 1940s, cheap and common by the 1970s) took over much everyday cooking. Room heating passed almost entirely to central furnaces, boilers and, more recently, heat pumps, so that the coal stove with its cheerful mica window has vanished from American homes. Wood stoves survive as a supplementary or rural heat source and are now regulated for smoke emissions by the US EPA, which first set standards for them in 1988.
Written for this edition, 2026.