connected with the art of cooking, to show you how "far afield" the figures of food may follow one who tries to find out their full meaning. I will now present to you the diagrams and description of the cooker and of the oven, and will presently invite you to test the quality of the food which has been prepared while I have been speaking. These two diagrams were first prepared in a rough way for a newspaper; the form of the heater to the Aladdin cooker has been changed, and some cross-sections have been introduced in order to increase the heating surface. The Aladdin oven is made at the present time of a different shape and in a different way; but the two diagrams will show to you the two conceptions on which the whole matter is based.
I have a strong suspicion, or I may even say a growing confidence, that I have really accomplished what Count Rumford undertook to do, but which he failed to establish permanently for want of a fuel like kerosene-oil or gas, which can be controlled, regulated, and thoroughly consumed.
I may have spent a thousand dollars more or less in developing this subject. The present very simple forms of apparatus have been adopted after considerable money had been wasted in more complex methods of reaching the same results. I believe this is the course in almost all inventions. I do not intend to become a manufacturer of ovens. I have made an arrangement with Messrs. Kenrick Brothers, of Brookline, who now make them on orders by hand-work, crediting me with a moderate commission from which I may ultimately recover what I have spent, although I have no great expectation of doing so. The ovens cost too much while they are made by hand; it is my hope that some regular stove-manufacturer may take up the subject at the point to which I have brought it, and make a business of introducing my apparatus on strictly commercial methods.
The price of the standard Aladdin oven like these which are before you, at the present time, is twenty-five dollars without the lamp, boxed and ready for delivery to express or railway. I hope they may ultimately be furnished, when made in a large way, for a considerably lower price; but even at the present price they will pay for themselves in economy of fuel, in economy of food, and in the comfort of those who do the work, in a very short term of weeks rather than of months.
I began the study of cooking apparatus many years ago, when endeavoring to aid factory operatives, during the period of very high-priced cotton, in supporting themselves on the wages which they could earn while the mills were running short time; and I had substantially conceived the "Aladdin Cooker," but I did not then follow up the subject so as to enable me to boil water in this apparatus by means of a lamp, kerosene-oil not then having been
