Stoves

A stove is an enclosed space in which fuel is burned to provide heating, either to heat the space in which the stove is situated, or to heat the stove itself and items placed on it. This article is principally concerned with enclosed stoves burning solid fuels for room heating. A kitchen stove is used to cook food. A wood-burning stove or a coal stove is typically used for heating a dwelling. Enclosed stoves are more efficient and prevents air from being sucked from the room into the chimney.

Due to concerns about air pollution, efforts have been made to improve stove design. Pellet stoves, for example are a type of clean-burning stove. Air-tight stoves more completely combust wood and eliminate polluting combustion products. In the U.S. since 1992, all wood stoves being manufactured must limit particulate emission.

The Old English word stofa meant any individual enclosed space, such as a room, and 'stove' is still occasionally used in that sense, as in 'stoved in'. Until well into the 19th century 'stove' was used to mean a single heated room, so that Joseph Bank’s assertion that he 'placed his most precious plants in the stove' or René Descarte’s observation that he got 'his greatest philosophical inspiration while sitting inside a stove' are not as odd as they first seem.

In its earliest attestation, cooking was done by roasting meat and tubers in an open fire. Pottery and other cooking vessels may be placed directly on an open fire, but setting the vessel on a support, as simple as a base of three stones, resulted in a stove. The three-stone stove is still widely used around the world. In some areas it developed into a U-shaped dried mud or brick enclosure with the opening in the front for fuel and air, sometimes with a second smaller hole at the rear.

A kitchen stove, cooker, or cookstove is a kitchen appliance designed for the purpose of cooking food. Kitchen stoves rely on the application of direct heat for the cooking process and may also contain an oven underneath or to the side that is used for baking. Traditionally these have been fueled by wood and one of the earliest recorded instances of a wood burning kitchen stove was the so-called stew stove (developed in 1735 by the French designer François de Cuvilliés and officially termed the Castrol Stove). More modern versions such as the popular Rayburn Range offer a choice between using wood or gas as the fuel source.

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