Scott here with another episode of the History Unplug podcast.

Benjamin Franklin's most lasting contribution may not have been helping author the Declaration

of Independence or brokering a treaty between the United States and France or scientific

contributions to electricity, but instead it was his stove.

Assumpled from iron plates, like pieces of flat-packed furniture, the Franklin's stove became early America's most iconic consumer product, spread from Pennsylvania to England,

and Italy, and beyond. This little stove made it possible to heat a living room much more

easily than a fireplace and use much less wood, but the stove was also a hypothesis.

Franklin proposed that, armed with science, he could invent his way out of a climate crisis.

After all, America was stuck right in the middle of a multi-century-long period known as a little ice age,

where unusually bitter winters sometimes brought life to a standstill.

He believed that his stove to provide snug

indoor comfort despite a shortage of wood caused by widespread deforestation. Essentially, he created

one of the first H-back systems. Today's episode, we're speaking to Joyce Chaplin, author of the Franklin

stove, an unintended American Revolution, that looks at the story of this invention, how Franklin

came up with it, and how this experiment led to other theories of Franklin, including the Gulfstream, theories on key gases in Earth's atmosphere, improving early steam engines, and how to clean up pseudo-urban air.

He gave early ideas to geoengineering, similar to what scientists are thinking of today, like putting aerosols in Earth's atmosphere, to trigger cooling in areas affected by extreme heat.

Franklin was, is always ahead of his time, and we explore this facet of his life with

his invention of the Franklin stove.

I hope you enjoyed this discussion with Joyce Chap.

And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

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