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Even around the 1700s the traditional colonial fireplace was becoming replaced by wood burning stoves and the open fire that had cooked for and warmed humankind since the beginning of time was relegated to the yearly campout.

Around this time is when the fireplace became more of a design feature, a place above which to have a mantle and above that, a panting, family portrait or mirror. Fireplaces weren’t particularly effective at most points in human history, with more of the heated air leaving through the chimney than heating the house. But it wasn’t until fireplaces started to become mere decoration that we saw just how inefficient fireplaces can be.

Very early American fireplaces were based on an English model that had remained mostly unchanged since the Dark Ages. These were very primitive and inefficient fireplaces with little more than a hood with a pair of side jambs and a little hole for smoke to escape through.

Ben Franklin invented the flue damper in the mid 1700s to help keep warm air inside and cold air out, while still letting the smoky air leave through the smoke flue. Before this innovation, a cold and unused fireplace was merely closed off with a very ineffective stove board.

Many colonial fireplaces used more than ten cords of wood each winter for heating and cooking purposes. Even with some of that time’s innovations, the majority of heated air was lost up the chimney. Like the campfires of today, people would huddle around the household fires, baking on one side and freezing on their back sides.

One of the reasons that there weren’t many new innovations in fireplace design is that each fireplace took tons of masonry and was built into a house. In order to experiment with different fireplace designs, the entire massive things would have to be torn down. This was simply not practical.

In addition to the large amounts of wasted heat in early wood burning fireplaces, they were notoriously smoking fixtures. It was quickly surmised that by exposing the coals and/or wood, the fire could generate more heat.

As early as the 1300s people were using andirons to raise the fire and expose the hot coals on its underside to heat the drafted air. Fire fences, or semi-circular fenders, were used to keep coals from falling out at night or other times when the fire would be left unsupervised.

In 1760 the first modern stove was born. The addition of side and back vents made it possible to move the household fire out into a central location in a room. This made heat circulation much more efficient. With this type of set up, less fuel is consumer while at the same time, more heat is left inside to circulate and heat the household.

Franklin’s design of the stove was soon evolved into literally thousands of designs for various applications from cooking and home use, to factories, hospitals and even railroad cars. By the 1700s traditional fireplaces were considered to be old fashioned as heat sources and downright archaic as kitchen stoves.

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