"Take a look at the simplest of objects. Let's take, for example, an old chair. It seems like nothing. But think of the universe comprised within it: the sweaty hands cutting the wood that used to be a robust tree, full of energy, in the middle of a luxuriant forest by some high mountains. The loving work that built it, the joyful anticipation of the one who bought it, the tired bodies it has helped, the pains and the joys it must have endured, whether in fancy halls or in a humble dining room in your neighbourhood. Everything, everything shares life and has its importance! Even the most worn down of chair carries inside the initial force of the sap climbing from the earth, out there in the forest, and will still be useful the day when, broken into kindling, it burns in some fireplace."

"Lyndon's gone and dragged Nasser away from the fireplace and onto the balcony again. Once you get him out there, it's a helluva job to get him back to the fireplace again."

"The first attempt at manufacturing heating apparatus at Durham, Pa., was in 1741, by the Durham Furnace Company. The firm consisted of George Taylor (later one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence), James Logan and James Morgan, iron masters (the latter being the father of General , the hero of Cowpens)."

"Till more effectual methods can take place, it would be of great service, to oblige all those Trades who make use of large Fires, to carry their Chimnies much higher into the air than they are at present..."

"I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it."

"[A]bout 1710, Count Polignac, of France, made an attempt to convert an ordinary fireplace into a heating apparatus by simply constructing a fireplace with an iron back, hearth, and jambs. The result was only a slight saving of heat. In 1716 Dr. Desaguliers, of London, succeeded in improving the Polignac fireplace so that it could be used for burning coal."

"In 1745 Franklin invented the famous stove which bears his name. This pattern continued to be cast at the Durham Furnace until 1774, and probably later."

"Mr. Culin read a communication from Mr. Charles Laubach, of Riegelsville, Bucks Co., Pa., giving an account of the stove plates manufactured at Durham Furnace, Durham, Pa., from 1741 to 1789."

"There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you won't have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, "Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana." No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, "Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!"

"Iron stoves were unknown before 1678, when Prince Rupert, of England, attempted to convert a fireplace into a furnace. This was the first attempt to force smoke back over the fire and create heat for warming apartments by the aid of iron."

"Workmen should be consulted, and encouraged to make experiments, whether a particular construction of the Chimnies would not assist in conveying off the Smoke, and in fending it higher into the air before it is dispersed."

"In small rooms... the chimney often smokes unless the door or window be open, not only because the fire devours and carries off a large quantity of the air of the room, but also because the fire requires a continual supply of air for its support; so that, if a proportional quantity of air which the fire consumes and sends up the chimney does not enter the room (which it cannot do in small rooms with a large fire), the fire languishes, and the smoke increases, since flame is nothing more than a kindled smoke, and smoke is only an extinguished flame, or, at least, not yet kindled."

"So great was the influence of Count Rumford as a man of science, and his ability as a writer, that his failure to acknowledge the value of the efforts of his predecessors seemed like a tacit condemnation of them, and proved the severest blow to the cause."

"The object of the art of heating is to secure this required warmth with the greatest economy and efficiency. ...For reasons of health it may be assumed that no system of heating is advisable which does not provide for a constant renewal of the air in the locality warmed, and on this account there is a difficulty in treating as separate... the subjects of heating and ventilation... The object of all heating apparatus is the transference of heat from the fire to the various parts of the building it is intended to warm, and this transfer may be effected by , by conduction or by . An open fire acts by radiation; it warms the air in a room by first warming the walls, floor, ceiling and articles... and these in turn warm the air. Therefore... the air is... less heated than the walls. In many forms of fireplaces fresh air is brought in and passed around the back and sides of the stove before being admitted into the room."

"[T]he so-called Rumford stove or fireplace... contracted the area of the fire-chamber, and gave the sides an angle of 135° with the back, or, which is the same thing, of 45° with the front of the fireplace, in order, as he said, to reflect the greatest possible amount of heat into the room. He considered the best proportions for the chimney recess to be when the width of the back was equal to the depth from front to back, and the width of the front or opening between the jambs three times the width of the back. These proportions are used today, and are undoubtedly the best. He objected to the use of iron for these surfaces on account of its great heat-conducting power, which wasted the heat and cooled off the fire; but advocated some non-conducting substance, such as fire-clay. He also objected to circular covings, on the ground that they produced eddies or currents, which would be likely to cause the chimney to smoke."

"But [Rumford's] chief, or perhaps only, real improvement consisted in the reduction of the size of the chimney-throat, and the rounding off of the lower edge of the chimney-breast... to afford less obstruction to the ascent of the smoke. ...This form, as given by Rumford, is, however, still defective. The smallest part of the flue should be at the bottom... so as to prevent the entrance into the flue of unburnt air from the room. ...The back of the fireplace should also incline forwards, as shown, in order to increase its radiating effect..."

"[Rumford] complains of the enormous waste of heat, and regrets that no means of saving it can be invented, in the face of the discoveries of both [Louis] Savot and [Nicholas] Gauger. Even his bevelled jambs for better reflecting the rays into the room had long since been recommended by Gauger. They were brought forward as quite new by Rumford. ...In speaking of the waste in unconsumed smoke... [Rumford] gives no way of consuming the smoke, or of alleviating the evil."

"Cold air, being heavier than warm, will fall below the latter, and press it upwards to make way for itself. Thus the air in the neighborhood of the fireplace will press the hot smoke up into the chimney-throat. If this throat is only large enough to take the smoke, hot air only will enter the flue, and the draught will be rapid. But if the throat is larger than necessary, that part of the cool air of the room which enters the fireplace and becomes most heated by the fire, and next in buoyancy to the smoke, will, in its turn, be pressed up by the cooler air behind it, and enter the flue alongside of the smoke. Indeed, the entire volume of the air of the room, being warmer than the outside air, will tend to enter the flue with the smoke, so long as there be room provided for its entrance. The heat of the column, and consequently the rapidity of its rise, will therefore be proportionately diminished."

"For this reason the throat of the chimney should be contracted until it is no larger than is sufficient to carry off the products of combustion. A similar contraction throughout the entire length of the flue would be desirable, were it not that an allowance must be made for clogging up by soot, and for the resistance by friction to the passage of the air offered by the rough walls of the flue."

"The open grate still holds favour... though... it has been superseded by the closed stove. The old form of open fire is... wasteful of fuel, and the loss of heat up the chimney and by conduction into the brickwork backing of the stove is considerable. Great improvements, however, have been effected in the design of open fireplaces, and many ingenious contrivances... are now in the market..."

"The first, to recognize and apply this principle was Count Rumford (1796-1802). ...But he is to be blamed for not investigating or at least acknowledging the progress made by his predecessors in this particular. ...[H]owever much good he may have done in improving the form of the chimney-throat, and in calling public attention to the advantages of bevelled over rectangular jambs, he... also did much to discourage any further effort in economizing the waste heat of the smoke, and should therefore be considered as having really done more than any other one man to retard the proper development of the subject."

"[N]ear half the children that are born and bred in London die under two years of age. ...[T]he constant and unremitting Poison is communicated by the foul Air, which, as the Town still grows larger, has made regular and steady advances in its fatal influence. ...[W]e are accustomed to read with great composure of the deaths of thosands of infants, suffocated every Year by Smoke and Stenches which good policy might in a great measure remove."

"The simple and earnest style of Count Rumford's essays, the substantial nature of his acknowledged improvement, the facility with which it could be tested, and the enthusiasm with which he urges its importance, the detailed directions he gives for the guidance of the builder, and the liberality with which he offered the free use of his invention and services to the public,—all tended to make a permanent impression, and not only to give the precedence over all others, but even to place the latter altogether in the shade. So much [so] that, though infinitely more important as tending to improve the ventilation of the apartment and the draught of chimney, as well as to save the waste heat of the fuel, they were almost forgotten, and, so far as the mass of the public is concerned, remain so... to the present..."

"In 1678, Prince Rupert invented a fire-place, so contrived that the draught took a downward direction before entering the flue, as shown in Fig. 18, in which... x is a wall built at a distance of 10 inches from the back of the hearth recess, and carried up to the mantel, where it is terminated by the wall x, thus completely closing all communication between the flue and the room. An opening, a, is made in this wall, 10 inches high, and of the same width as the length of the grate, and its sill is 2 inches above the top rib of the grate. Fixed within the chimney is a plate of iron, i, placed perpendicularly, so as to divide it into two equal parts. To the upper edge of this plate is hinged an iron door, c, as long as the chimney is wide, and this door can be brought into the position c, or into that indicated by the dotted lines at e. The fuel grate stands on the hearth, and is placed nearly in a line with the wall of the room. At the back of the ash-pit is a brick that closes the aperture through which the soot is removed. When the fire is first lighted, the smoke door, c, is pushed back, and when the draught is once established, this door is drawn forward, and the smoke being thus prevented from flowing upwards, reverberates downwards, and passes the lower edge of the division plate, i, and rises between it and the back of the hearth into the chimney flue. In boisterous weather, or with such a fire-place, in an upper room, where the chimney is short, another iron door, r, is hung under the edge of the mantel, in front of the fire-place, and extending the whole width of the opening. Its breadth varies according to circumstances, but it is made so as to reach within 2 inches of the upper bar of the fire-grate, when hanging in the position shown by the dotted lines at s. This converts the fire into a furnace, and the room will, in such case, be "warmer than it would be with a fire four times the size made in a common cradell." When the smoke flows regularly through the aperture, a, this door is thrown back out of use, as at r. In some cases, the ordinary fire-board or fire-cloth was used instead of this door."

"An economical method of heating two rooms by one ...[fireplace] is described by Savot. A plate of iron is made to separate the fire-places of the two adjacent rooms. A fire made on the hearth, a, (Fig. 20), heats the plate, n, and this, in its turn, by its radiation, warms the air in the adjacent room, e, as effectually as a stove would do, provided its flue, i, is properly closed. Or if the second room have no chimney, it may... be warmed by making an opening in the wall... and closing it with an iron plate. When Dr. Franklin was in Paris, he saw an example of this contrivance, and estimated it highly."

"The hearth was a thick iron plate placed above the old hearth, with an interval, n, of 3 inches between them. The two sides, or covings of the fire-place, were also formed of thick iron plates, placed 3 inches from the jambs. The space, n, at the back, and the spaces at the sides, communicated with the space, n, under the hearth ; two pipes, or channels, i, communicating with these hollow spaces, opened into the room at c, as shown by the dotted line in the section; these spaces could be closed at pleasure. When the fire was burning, the iron hearth, and the plates which formed the sides or covings, and the back, became very hot. The cold air at the floor, entering by the openings at a, into the space, n, was heated by the hearth, and rising into the spaces at the back and sides, had its temperature further increased; it then entered the channels, i, and escaped at c, thus diffusing an agreeable warmth over the whole room."

"But, where the fire-place could not be conveniently altered, Savot perforated with small holes a plate of iron, the width and length of which were nearly equal to the hearth, and this was fixed 3 inches above the tiles of the common hearth. On this perforated plate he placed & grill de fer of the same length as the billets to be burned, and raised 9 inches above the plate; the wood was placed on the grate, the charcoal on the perforated plate, and the hearth received the ashes; the air, rising through the small holes, made the charcoal burn briskly, and this so much assisted the burning of the wood, that a rapid draught up the chimney was established, and smoke prevented."

"In Savot's description of the fire-place used to heat the Cabinet des Livres, at the , we have the first recorded attempt at combining the cheerfulness of an open fire with the economy of an enclosed stove. Fig. 15 is a front view, and Fig. 16 a vertical section of this ingenious contrivance."

"The width between the jambs was reduced to 3 feet; the jambs from the mantel were to be carried up sloping to the waist, or where the flue begins to be of uniform width, and the opening of the fire-place was formed like an arch."

"[T]here is one writer, whose inventions have especially served as the type of many a modern fire-place, and at the time of their introduction in 1713, showed a great and sudden advance in the art of warming apartments. It has been said... that the author... was no less a man than the Cardinal Polignac, who, under the assumed name of Gauger, published a treatise, entitled "La Mechanique du Feu, ou l'Art d'en augmenter les effets et d'en diminuer la dépense, contenant le Traité de Nouvelles Cheminées qui echauffent plus que les Cheminées ordinaires, et qui ne sont point sujettes à fumer" [The Mechanics of Fire, or the Art of increasing its effects and reducing its expenditure, containing the Treatise on New Chimneys which heat much more than ordinary Chimneys, and which are not subject to smoking] This treatise was reprinted at Amsterdam in 1714, and a translation of it, by Dr. Desaguliers... was published in London in 1716."

"He saw the evils of large chimneys, and the necessity for a due supply of air to the fire. The fire should be proportioned to the size of the chimney, and vice versâ, and smoke may often be prevented by lowering the mantel."

"[Savot] also points out how the chimney may be too long for the fire, or how one large chimney may draw upon another smaller one; and he recommends that the flue be smooth on the inside, to diminish friction."

"Savot pointed out the means for curing that domestic plague—a smoky chimney; and, like a true physician, set about investigating the causes of the disease."

"Fireplaces have... come a long way from their crude "open fire" origins to... safe, efficient units... The heavy masonry materials... are no longer necessary. The amount of space required has been dramatically reduced, and the amount of labor... as well. ...Current fireplaces provide the inherent "charm"... while serving as an efficient and usable source of heat."

"And what is all this, but that Hellish and dismall Cloud of SEA-COALE? which is not onely perpetually imminent over her head... so universally mixed with the otherwise wholsome and excellent Aer, that her Inhabitants breathe nothing but an impure and thick Mist, accompanied with a fuliginous and filthy vapour, which renders them obnoxious to a thousand inconveniences, corrupting the Lungs, and disordering the entire habit of their Bodies; so that Catharrs, Phthisicks, Coughs and Consumptions, rage more in this one City, than in the whole Earth besides."

"We leave it to the political arithmetician to compute how much money will be saved to a country, by its spending two thirds less of fuel; how much labor saved in cutting and carriage of it; how much more land may be cleared by cultivation; how great the profit by the additional quantity of work done, in those trades particularly that do not exercise the body so much, but that the workfolks are obliged to run frequently to the fire to warm themselves; and to physicians to say, how much healthier thick-built towns and cities will be, now half suffocated with sulphury smoke, when so much less of that smoke shall be made, and the air breathed by the inhabitants be consequently so much purer."

"It is remarkable that, while the open fireplace was one of the earliest contrivances invented to contribute to the health and comfort of man, the upright flue for carrying off the injurious products of combustion should have remained one of the latest."

"[A] great improvement was made in France in fire-places by Louis Savot (born 1579 ; died 1640), a licentiate in the Faculty of Medicine at Paris."

"To improve the draught of the fire he raised the hearth about 4 inches, and lowered the mantel so as to make the opening of the fire-place about 3 feet high."

"Unless suitable fresh air inlets are provided, this form of stove will cause the room to be draughty, the strong current of warm air up the flue drawing cold air in through the crevices in the doors and windows. The best form of open fireplace is the ventilating stove, in which fresh air is passed around the back and sides of the stove before being admitted through convenient openings into the room. This has immense advantages over the ordinary type of fireplace. The illustrations show two forms of ventilating fireplace..."

"Vitruvius... thus describes the construction of the or stove for heating the or sweating room of a bath. The floor is made inclining, so that a ball placed on any part of it would roll towards the fireplace, by which means the heat is more equally diffused in the sweating-chamber. The floor is paved with tiles... and on these are built brick pillars... two feet high, and cemented with clay and hair mixed together. The pillars are placed at such a distance, as will allow tiles to be laid on them to form the ceiling of the hypocaust, and support the pavement of the caldarium. The air to the caldarium, or room over the hypocaust, is admitted through an aperture in the centre of its roof, from which a brazen shield is suspended by chains. By raising and lowering this shield, which opens or shuts the aperture, the heat of the caldarium is regulated. For heating the water to supply the baths, there are to be three caldrons... the arched cavities in which they stand are to be heated by one fire. After such minute instructions how to form the stove in which large quantities of wood were to be consumed, it is singular that he should omit to notice in what way the smoke produced was to be conveyed into the atmosphere. From this silence, it has been inferred that he was ignorant of what Anderson calls "the elegant and commodious tube now known by the name of a chimney.""

"Longlande, in Pierce the Plowman'sVision, feelingly alludes to the change as prompted by a mean and selfish wish to abridge the ancient hospitality observed towards the poor. "Elynge is that halle eche day in the wyke, Ther the lorde ne the lady liketh nat to sitte. Nowe hath eche ryche a reule to eten by hym silve In a privey parlour for pore mennys sake; Or in a chaumbre wyth a chymney, and leve the cheef halle That was mad for melis men to eten inne." The chimneyed chamber was spacious and lofty, and usually formed with a large bay window, looking into the court of the castle."

"The register-plate was described at the close of the fifteenth century by Alberti... and by others who wrote afterwards. Were this simple and cheap smoke-valve introduced into every cottage chimney, it would save the heat of [5] or [6] millions of tons of coals that is now annually wasted and thrown away."

"The use of these fire places in very many houses, both here in Pennsylvania, and the neighbouring states, has been, and is, a great saving of wood to the inhabitants."

"[O]f the [15 1/2] millions of tons of coals raised yearly from the mines, not more than [3 1/2] millions are consumed by steam-engines and in manufacturing operations, leaving [11] or [12] millions of tons of fuel to be mismanaged in kitchens and sitting-rooms throughout the country."

"An ironmonger in London, however, assuming a good deal of my pamphlet, and working it up into his own, making some small changes in the machine, which rather hurt its operation, got a patent for it there, and made, as I was told, a little fortune by it. And this is not the only instance of patents taken out of my inventions by others, though not always with the same success; which I never contested, as having no desire of profiting by patents myself, and hating disputes."

"The strong hold of Conway is further remarkable for exhibiting another domestic refinement, not found, except at , in any contemporary building. A hearth is recessed into the wall, and has a rising from it for the passage of the smoke into the air. It is true, that after this period, flued fireplaces were sometimes made in rooms that had been erected without them, but the chimney in Conway Castle, and a similar one at Kenilworth [Castle], appear as if they had formed part of the original edifices."

"A consists of a fire-place, in which the fuel is consumed, and a flue to carry off the smoke and vapour arising from the combustion; thus affording the benefit of the heat of a fire without the inconvenience of its smoke. But these objects were, and still are, very imperfectly attained; a large portion of the fuel being wasted without increasing the warmth of the apartment."

"Dr. Franklin, in 1785, published "Observations on the Cause and Cure of Smoky Chimneys." He has very satisfactorily explained all the usual causes of this defect, and shown their remedies. To this pamphlet succeeded the "Essay" of Count Rumford, in 1796, whose improvements in the construction of fire-places have been very generally adopted. These two works together, form a valuable body of information. They are well known to the public, but it is not so generally known, that exactly a hundred years ago, viz. in the year 1715, Dr. Desagulier published his book, entitled "Fires Improved, being a new method of Building Chimneys, so as to prevent their smoking, &c." which is a translation of a still older work from the French of M. Gauger, which shows that the most, if not all, the principles pointed out by Count Rumford were understood, and are explained by M. Gauger. He also proposed seven different constructions of chimneys, in which there are hollow cavities made by iron plates in the back[,] jambs and hearth, through which plates the heat passing warms the air in those cavities, which is continually coming into the room fresh and warm. This construction had many obvious advantages; but the expense and difficulty attending it, at that early period, discouraged the propagation of the invention. In our own times, however, similar constructions have been brought forward as new, probably without the knowledge of what had been done so long before, and therefore with all the merit of invention."