Darn it, the storm knocked the power out. I can't get a thing out of this electric range. But I've got to get dinner on the table! Hmm...I know. I'll take our camping stove here, and put it on top of the range--then I'll take this coffee can, cut a hole in the bottom, and run some plumbing pipe from it down to the campstove here. There we go. OK, now I'll fill the can with gasoline from the lawnmower gascan! Whoopsie, spilled a little--ah, it'll evaporate. All righty!--looks like we're back in business! Hey, hand me those matches!
As frightening as this scenario seems, gasoline stoves or "vapor stoves" were for sale in Ypsilanti in 1888, as seen in the June 28, 1888 Ypsilantian ad at top. The stoves burned "stove gasoline," a "heavy" or crude form of the fuel. (Vapor stoves could burn multiple fuels that also included kerosene, a type of oil, or a fuel called "distillate"). Gasoline stoves offered a quicker cooking time and, unlike wood or coal stoves, didn't make the kitchen unbearably hot in the summer. They also weren't sooty, like coal stoves. They were a blessing to homemakers who were tired of sweltering at every summer meal and who weren't connected to a city natural gas system.Insurance companies weren't fond of gasoline stoves due to their inconvenient tendency to explode in a giant fireball of ignited gasoline vapor that could incinerate the entire house. One insurance policy charged an extra premium for gasoline stoves and took pains to spell out the terms under which it would allow a homeowner to install a gasoline stove. It allowed only one stove per household and stipulated that owners could fill the can of gas only during daylight--to avoid the danger of filling the can, with a fuel exuding flammable vapors, by the light of a flame lamp.
Take a look at the range in your kitchen and imagine a can of gasoline suspended above it, connected by a single slender pipe, as in the Ypsilanti ad at top, or the picture at left. Can you imagine this device in a home with lively young children prone to bump against this pipe and slosh the can? 
Another danger the stoves created was toxic vapor, as seen in this story at right, about the tragic death of one couple asphyxiated by their stove. A Google search for "gasoline stove" and "death" summons up scores of late 19th-century obituaries. Thankfully, times were changing.
"In the latter part of 1901," says this excerpt below from Victor Ross's book Petroleum in Canada, "the increased demand for gasoline began to manifest itself, and gasoline at that time was no longer the indifferently regarded product of the primitive days of the early gasoline stoves."
"As the price of gasoline increased and as the danger of the gasoline stove began to be more thoroughly understood, the real work of producing a satisfactory kerosene stove began."Gasoline stoves were, thankfully, a short-lived appliance in some late-19th-century Ypsilanti homes as safer cooking devices succeeded them, relegating this household bomb to the past.
3 comments :
It was really difficult to clarify the various types of fuels that this era's stoves burned, for two reasons:
1. I initially didn't even think that a stove could burn more than one form of fuel, as vapor stoves could. This is an example of my modern preconceptions leading me astray. So when I read of a stove burning oil, I thought of it as an oil stove, not as the vapor stove it could have been. Quite confusing.
2. Gasoline-burning stoves were so short-lived that there simply isn't a lot of info out there that's readily available, aside from mentions in numerous obituaries.
Here's what I think is true:
1. Vapor stoves, such as those produced by the nearby Detroit Vapor Stove Company,
(http://www.goantiques.com/detail,detroit-vapor-stove,146707.html),
could burn multiple fuels. The DVSC ad whose link I just pasted there says they can burn oil, distillate, or gasoline. Another source said they could burn distillate, kerosene, or gasoline.
2. I get the impression, not confirmed, that there were also stoves produced that could burn ONLY gasoline (the crude "stove gasoline" mentioned in the blog post above). This may or may not be true.
I didn't go into the depths of detail in the post because it wasn't necessary, but at the same time I didn't want to be misleading. I may be missing something, and would welcome any clarification by any old-stove enthusiasts/historians. But I am confident of the details I did put into the post (crosses fingers).
Phew. Time for a cup of tea now (made on my own gas stove--natural gas, that is).
Mmmmmmmm... I love the smell of eggs, bacon, and gasoline in the morning. :-)
Yes, lovely...and I read in one of the things I read for this post that some people believed that the gasoline also imparted its own flavor to the food. Scrumptious.
I presume that these gasoline stoves would produce carbon monoxide just as a car would. Perhaps the relative draftiness of old houses was the saving ventilation-grace for many families cooking over these monsters.
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