Franklin stove
[2] It was intended to produce more heat and less smoke than an ordinary open fireplace, but it achieved few sales until it was improved by David Rittenhouse.
The two distinguishing features of Franklin's stove were a hollow baffle (a metal panel that directed the flow of the fire's fumes) and a flue that acted as an upside-down siphon.
In 1618, Franz Kessler (c. 1580–1650) of Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany published Holzsparkunst (The Art of Saving Wood), featuring a stove in which the fumes from a fire were forced to snake through five chambers, one above the other, before entering the chimney.
[5] In 1713, Frenchman Nicolas Gauger (c. 1680–1730) published a book, La Mécanique du Feu (The Mechanics of Fire), in which he presented novel designs for fireplaces.
The baffle was a wide but thin cast-iron box, which was open to the room's air at its bottom and two holes on its sides, near its top.
[11] Dalesme's stove could burn wood, incense, and even "coal steept in cats-piss" yet produce very little smoke or smell.
Gauger's book on his innovative fireplace designs was translated into English – Fires Improv'd: Being a New Method of Building Chimneys, So as to Prevent their Smoaking (1715) – by a French immigrant to England, Jean Théophile Desaguliers (1683–1744).
[15] Franklin read both of Desaguliers' books[16] and developed his own designs for a stove that could provide more heat with less smoke.
In 1742, Franklin finished his first design which implemented new scientific concepts about heat which had been developed by the Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738), a proponent of Isaac Newton's ideas.
[17] He supplied his equipment from a local iron pioneer William Branson from Reading, PA.[18] Franklin wanted his stoves to be available to everyone, relishing popular appreciation of his handiwork and eschewing patents.
[citation needed] This combination of events led to the first Franklin stoves being manufactured by Reading furnaces, which was owned by the local Van Leer family.
[19][20][21] Two years later, Franklin wrote a pamphlet describing his design and how it operated in order to sell his product.
[26] The inverted siphon would operate properly only if the fire burned constantly, so that the temperature in the flue was high enough to produce a draft.
A later version, designed by David Rittenhouse, solved many of the problems Franklin's original stove had, and became popular.
