From the fires of primitive men to the "stube", from the ancestors of the fireplaces to modern heating systems, the man has always found new ways to heat the places he lives in. Throughout history the man has studied and found new methods to make the spaces he lives in warmer, thus cosier and more liveable, and describing in a detailed way all these developments would be very hard, especially if you think that the fire was discovered 400,000 years ago, and it is not difficult to understand that in hundreds of thousands of years the developments and changes in this field have been numberless. Here are some essential steps in the history of heating.
As said above, the discover of fire, thus of the first method to produce warmth – as well as to cook food, produce light and defend oneself against animals – dates back to 400,000 years ago. Everybody knows that the fire discovery occurred by accident, and in the beginning the man was not able to make fire alone, and all he could do was keep it alive: later on he found a way to make fire autonomously.
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From these primitive fires the man has then experimented many other heating systems. In the pre-Hellenic civilizations there was already an ancestor of the fireplace, which stood in the main room of the house, and the smoke produced by fire went out through a hole on the ceiling. This type of fireplace was used for a long time, until wood began to be replaced by other nonflammable materials, like rocks and bricks, also to ward off the danger of fires. Rock walls made it possible to build flues, and consequently to use wall fireplaces. The first wall fireplaces appeared in the colder countries of the north, and became popular also in the rest of Europe between the 13th and the 14th century. In addition to fireplaces, another essential instrument to warm rooms has always been the stove. The first models of stoves were characterized by a cylindrical, pyramidal, compact or barrel shape, and were built with refractory bricks. The external part was covered with ceramic decorations, with majolica or plaster. Starting from the 15th century, stoves began to have also an important aesthetic function, and became a real decorative feature of the house.
Nowadays there are many other ways to warm up a house, from radiators to underfloor heating, but both stoves and fireplaces are still appreciated not only for practical, but also for aesthetic reasons. The latest models of stoves and fireplaces are certainly very different from the ones that dominated the rooms of our ancestors, and with the passing of time many types of stoves and heaters have been launched on the market, like pellet stoves, which are notably popular at the moment, and modular tiled stoves. And the producers of heaters and stoves are paying more and more attention not only to the functionality of the object, but also to its aesthetic feature, as they are dealing with objects that are now considered as an important component of the furniture of a house, and not only as instruments to produce warmth.
