There is a trend of networking home appliances together,
and combining their controls and key functions.
For instance, energy distribution could be managed more evenly so that
when a washing machine is on, an oven can go into a delayed start mode, or vice
versa. Or, a washing machine and clothes dryer could share information about
load characteristics (gentle/normal, light/full), and synchronize their finish
times so the wet laundry does not have to wait before being put in the dryer.
Efforts to take cooking away
from the hearth and onto the stove—which
was essentially a space heater and not a food cooker well into the 19th
century—probably foreshadowed the housework revolution. Heating stoves were
produced with holes whose covers could be removed and into which pots of
various sizes could be set to boil. Finally, an effective cooking stove
appeared by 1815. It burned wood on a contained hearth and had an iron top
above with covered holes for pots. A fire door opened beside the hearth.
Improvements flowed steadily thereafter, including an oven—first above the stove top but eventually located
beneath it—and a grate that could be shaken to clear ashes. Later, a reservoir
was added opposite the firebox to heat and store domestic water. Such stoves
continue to be made in small quantities for use in remote or frontier
situations, but by 1840 in England and 1860 in the United States, illuminating
gas had come into use for cooking and a new kind of stove, or cooker in
Britain, had begun its evolution into the modern gas range. Advances in the
thermostat throughout the 19th century enabled the development of effective
temperature controls for ovens. Kerosene stoves were created about 1875 and
later modified for other liquid fuels, including gasoline. The electric range,
experimented with very early in the 19th century, became popular in the 1930s
and thereafter competed steadily with the gas range. Refinements of both these
ranges included increasingly versatile timers to start and end cooking
automatically at preselected times; double ovens; overhead or under-stove vents
with fans to filter or eject fumes; and such special cooking elements as
stockpots, rotisseries, deep fryers, griddles, and broilers with beds of
ceramic coals to supply the flavour of charcoal-broiled meats. Range tops or
cooking surfaces can be installed separately in counters or cabinets, and ovens
can be set in walls, with or without the fireplace from which they sprang. In
short, the stove has been automated so that a meal can be cooked in the absence
of the cook and so that electricity will do tedious chores such as turning
spits and even cleaning the oven.
Whereas the electric stove generates heat through the resistance of iron
wire to the passage of electric current, later developments in cooker design
apply various forms of electromagnetic radiation. An infrared cooker, used
mainly in commercial applications and especially to keep cooked foods warm,
employs an infrared lamp; the unit must be housed in red glass that filters the
radiation, thus confining it to the implement. The ability of radio-frequency
radiation to heat food quickly without heating the surrounding area had long
been noted in various radiation experiments. This potential was harnessed in
the development of the microwave oven,
which became widely popular from the early 1970s, at first commercially, then
in homes. It is particularly valued for its speed in cooking any food,
especially quick-frozen food.
The electric hot plate was one offshoot of early
electric-cooking experiments that had a continuing life of its own, and it
helped spawn a bewildering variety of specialized small appliances—each with an
electric heating element and a food container—including electric skillets,
griddles, pancake and waffle irons, woks, stockpots, grills, toasters, coffee
makers (percolator, drip, and espresso), and warming trays. For more details
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