History
Though not very popular in North America, another type of water heater developed in Europe predated the storage model. In London, England, in 1868, a painter named Benjamin Waddy Maughan invented the first instantaneous domestic water heater that didn't use solid fuel. Named the geyser after an Icelandic gushing hot spring, Maughan's invention made cold water at the top flow through wires that were heated by hot gases from a burner at the bottom. Hot water then flowed into a sink or tub. The invention was somewhat dangerous because there was no flue to remove heated gases from the bathroom. A water heater is still sometimes called a geyser in the UK. The terms electric water boiler, electric dispensing pot or electric water urn are also commonly used there.
Maughn's invention influenced the work of a Norwegian mechanical engineer named Edwin Ruud. The first automatic, storage tank-type gas water was invented around 1889 by Ruud after he immigrated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. The Ruud Manufacturing Company, still in existence today, made many advancements in tank-type and tankless water heater design and operation.
Read more about this topic: Water Heating
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)
“It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race.”
—Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)