"The maximum warmth produced by the two heaters [was] literally sufficient to roast an ox..."
The Evening Journal (August 29, 1892)
From the eighteenth century, people began to cook with stoves rather than using open fire, which was dirty, dangerous, and inefficient. The first electric stove was a little longer in coming, although exactly who invented it and when is a matter of some debate.
Although the Carpenter Electric Heating Manufacturing Company produced an electric stove in 1891, the first patent for an electric stove was granted to William Hadaway in 1896. Another claim to the invention comes from Thomas Ahearn (1855- 1938), a Canadian businessman and inventor, who set up the Ottawa Electric Company in 1882. Ahearn was reputedly the first person to cook a meal using electricity in 1892.
The early electric stove worked by running electricity through a resistance coil; the coil heats up, which in turn heats up an iron plate upon which a cooking vessel, with food inside it, sits. Today electric hobs use glass-ceramic tops instead of iron and the heat often comes from a halogen bulb instead of a resistance ring, but the principle is basically the same.
The electric stove was slow to take off because few people had access to electricity at the time, A fully electric kitchen was unveiled at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, and featured an electric stove. But, it was not until the 1920s that the electric stove began to be a serious competitor to the gas stove.
