Bachelor stoves

Ran across this while reading up on the Pratt typewriter.

This is described as a bachelor’s stove. It was supposedly invented by James Watt himself. One specimen was donated to a museum by a Watt descendant in 1863. The relative claimed this was the same teapot Watt was using when he was inspired to make a steam engine, but historians doubt the claim. More likely it was an existing product that Watt used in his quarters, or possibly a product designed by Watt for sale.

The stove has three parts, from right to left: A miniature charcoal stove with grate and chimney; a stewpot that fits into the top of the stove; and a teapot that does the same.

It tickles my ‘kit’ fancy. I love equipment that provides everything you need in self-contained form.

This type of kit was more commonly known as a camp stove. It was especially common in early automobile touring. Many of them were bucket-shaped, following the Watt pattern.

Many of these outfits ran on acetylene, since 1910 cars already had an acetylene generator for lighting.

The Bachelor Stove label remained active in Britain, where it grew into what we’d now call an Apartment Stove or Kitchenette.

(Of course most full-sized British appliances would be called apartment size in America.)

The label is still commercially normal in India for the original Watt-size outfit, one-burner hotplates.

These devices aren’t technically interesting. I want to emphasize a semantic point, not a technical point. Bachelors were respectable in earlier centuries before the cruel Cinderella myth took over all of culture and commerce. Marriage and single life were equally accepted because PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT. I’m not surprised that bachelor is still a commercially acceptable word in India, which continues to recognize that PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT.