[Stoves] RE: genealogy of stoves

[Jigme Rangdrol]

Greetings Dr Martin Boll and stoves list.
This sounds like an interesting project for several people and lifetimes!

I have truly enjoyed the works of James Burke and a biographic recording 
of stove history would no doubt be a riot of characters.
It seems too much for an accurate recording of any real use.
Evolution of technology is sufficiently interesting to negate the need 
for biographic recording.
There is no real need to worry about attributions at all.
There are, as people have been saying, some problems with claims and 
patents and all that.
These boil down to Theology for the most part and can be eliminated as 
such with little difficulty.
A simple statement of facts can avoid all the theological entanglements 
in most cases.
For example people claim to know who invented the Elbow or "Rocket 
Stove" and there would be endless debate if you allow the theological 
positions.
If you remove them and stick to just the facts it could be stated that 
"the elbow stove was used by the Romans in England to heat public baths 
and re-emerged in the computer age" etc etc. This avoids all the 
theological and ego problems - they are after all intricate to each 
other - and thus 99.9% of the debate and strife with no diminishment of 
the quality or usefulness of the recording.
These other issues derive from the same sources and can be cleared away 
by using the proper definition system of a single source. For example 
the Oxford Dictionary. Thus the word "Discover" would mean "To see for 
the first time." and not as is common in colloquial English "To be the 
first to see" etc etc etc. The attribution of invention and indeed the 
words "Invent" and "Discover" would be almost completely unrequired as 
so very very little of the technology of stoves is in fact new and the 
real inventors and discoverers are unnameable.
In the works where these methods have been employed there is room for 
singular and personalized attributions if need be but in an area as old 
as stoves there is little need.

A most interesting collection would be images of stoves in a chronologic 
order. Since we now have the digital power to excersie it would be an 
appropriate collective computer recording.