History
The first gas heater made use of the same principles of the Bunsen burner invented in the previous year. It was first commercialized by the English company Pettit and Smith in 1856. The flame heats the air locally. This heated air then spreads by convection, thus heating the whole room. Today the same principle applies with outdoor patio heaters or "mushroom heaters" which act as giant Bunsen burners.
Beginning in 1881 the burner's flame was used to heat a structure made of asbestos, a design patented by Sigismund Leoni, a British engineer. Later, fire clay replaced the asbestos because it is easier to mould. Modern gas heaters still work this way although using other refractory material.
Modern gas heaters have been further developed to include units which utilize radiant heat technology, rather than the principles of the Bunsen burner. This form of technology does not spread via convection, but rather, is absorbed by people and objects in its path. This form of heating is particularly useful for outdoor heating, where it is less uneconomical than heating air free to move away.
Read more about this topic: Gas Heater
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)