Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1906-11-01


in the American colonies during the
half-century before the Revolution
were confronted by problem quite
as serious as any which the obstinacy
of kings and parliaments imposed up.
on their men folks-a general scare
ity of fuel.
The time had long gone by when
one could cut unlimited quantities of
wood in his own back yard, while the
least fortunate towns had no adequate
supply within 100 miles. Seven months
of winter and no railroads made fuel,
as one householder expressed it in
1745, "a very considerable article In
the expense of families. Life must
indeed have been perptual coal
strike.
Evidently under these conditions.
the older style of fireplaces, which
opened shoulder high and took in a
four-foot stick, had become impossible.
The, wonder is that they were ever
tolerated at all. They took more wood
than paper mill and more draft than
a blast furnace, so that our colonial
householder continues, 1.-THE door can
seldom be shut; and the cold air so
nips the backs and heels of those
that sit before the fire that they have
no comfort till either screens or set.
ties are provided to keep it off"
l,f L. 4
so to brick up the old fireplaces as to
reduce them nearly to the modern
type. For some reason or other the
American colonists, like the English.
man of to-day, had an invincible pre-
JUDGE against the closed alright
stove such as was in general use In
Europe On the other hand they were
unable to adopt the open crate soft
coal fire of the mother country. be-
cause thought coal had been dis
covered long before, and the Virginia
Eelds had been worked as early as
1850. the distance of the deposits
from tidewater and the lack of roads
made the price of coal higher than
" has ever been since In snort, our
forebears of the middle century
warmed themselves as well as they
could at open wood fires, and for the
rest went cold.
Such, therefore, was the state of
affairs when Benjamin Franklin took
up the problem. People still call him
Franklin, the philosopher, for the sake
of the ALTERATION, but he was little of
philosopher In the modern sense.
On the contrary, he was an especially
hard headed, practical man who under.
stood equally well Nature and human
nature, and In the scanty leisure OF
life devoted to the service of the
state made himself one Of the first
men of science of his age
He knew all that anybody knew In
his day about heat, combustion and
the theory OF chimney draft; In fact.
some of his own discoveries had been
In this very field. He knew mis- coun-
trymen also, and he knew IL to be
equally impossible to PERSUADE
them to adopt at once closed stoves
or to satisfy their demand for com.
fort with open fireplaces. He devised
therefore, not so much new form of
stove as new system of heating.
The so-called Franklin stove of CON-
merce, which some of us are con.
strained to use instead OF fireplaces
because our houses happened to get
themselves built between the two
fireplace eras, Is, so far as the name
goes, an utter fraud. 1t has no more
to do with Benjamin Franklin than
with Napolean Bonaparte.
Franklin's stove, the Philadelphia
fireplace, as he called 1.-THE old
philosopher seemed to like allitera.
ton as well as the rest of us-em-
bodied at least two absolutely new
principles of stove construction, and
though the original Franklin stove u
as extinct as the ichthyosaurus one or
both these principles still appear
in almost every modern piece of neat
ing apparatus.
America today Is convenient and
efficient stoves and furnaces alto
gether out-olasses all other countries
OF the world. She does 30 largely be-
cause other inventors have developed
Franklin's ideas. That famous cpl
gram about the lightning from heaven
and the scepters from tyrants might
Justly have included also some allu-
sion to zero weather.
The Philadelphia fireplace, stove
without a stovepipe, stood everywhere
clear of the wa; and connected with
the chimney only through It's bottom.
II had no legs, but rested fat on the
hearth, portion OF which had to be
removed to make fiues, while a brick
wall behind 1t closed the opening Of
the original fireplace.
The smoke Of the fire, therefore,
Instead OF passing directly into the
chimney went along the top OF the
stove, then down again and under the
floor. This down draft was a unique
feature.
The other was that between the
two passages. at the back Of the fire.
was the air box, into which fresh air
from beneath the hearth
through a pipe openinR ont ~ doore