20 Clever Ways People Stayed Warm Before Central Heating

Firebacks made of cast iron have been reflecting heat from a fireplace back into the room since the 1400s. In 1742, Benjamin Franklin improved upon this concept with his Pennsylvania Fireplace, a cast-iron box that circulated heated air around a baffle-shaped flue. He kept the front open on purpose because colonists wanted to watch the flames. Subsequent inventors such as David Rittenhouse closed the opening completely, producing the first genuine potbellies.

From prehistoric times through the middle of the twentieth century, German farmers lived in a building called a Wohnstallhaus, or “housebarn,” which placed human dwellings in lofts or rooms above the stalls. An average adult cow emits about 800 to 1,000 watts of continuous body heat, and even though timber-framed floors and walls kept people structurally separate from the animals below, that warmth still rose up through the ceilings. Free heating, courtesy of the cows!

This qulliq (hand-carved soapstone lamp), used by Inuit communities for centuries, burned rendered seal or whale blubber with a wick made of dried Arctic moss. When properly trimmed, it was able to maintain temperatures from 35 to 60°F inside the igloo while the temperature outside was as low as minus 40°F. It also never melted the snow walls containing its warmth.

Across northern China, the kang, a raised masonry bed, has been employed for more than 2,000 years. Hot exhaust gases from the kitchen stove flow through a channel of flues beneath the bed, maintaining its surface temperature at 100°F to 104°F round-the-clock without any other source of heat. Dinner cooks the bed.

During the 16th through the 19th centuries, long-handled warming pans made of copper or brass with a perforated lid held red-hot embers. The pan was whisked over the bed linen by someone to warm the bed and drive out moisture, then removed from the bed before someone got into it. By about 1790, doctors cautioned that the embers could create carbon monoxide, so warming bags filled with dry sand or rock salt were used instead.

Constructed from the 1400s to the 1700s, the Russian pechka was a huge brick stove with serpentine flues inside that absorbed the heat of the fire. The sleeping platform, or lezhanka, maintained temperatures around 85°F to 90°F for about 24 hours after just one firing. The heavy masonry kept the heat in check, so no one slept directly against the raw firebrick.

In 1844, American inventor Charles Goodyear filed a patent for vulcanized rubber, which made it possible for rubber to resist high temperatures without melting. By the 1870s, India rubber hot water bottles, which were flexible and easily transportable, were being marketed in England and North America. In 1903, Croatian inventor Slavoljub Eduard Penkala patented an improved version called the Termofor. In other words, Penkala refined the idea — he didn’t invent it.

The kotatsu, still widely used in Japan today, first appeared in the 1300s as a sunken floor hearth or portable brazier. It eventually evolved into a tabletop version: a low wooden table covered by a thick futon that blankets the user’s legs and keeps heat in. It’s a wonderfully simple idea: heat the people instead of the whole room. Charcoal remained the source of heat for most of its history until electric heating elements took over in the 1950s.

The union suit, patented in 1868 during the Victorian dress reform movement, which pushed for more practical and less restrictive clothing, was a one-piece knitted flannel garment that ran from wrist to ankle. It replaced the layered underclothes of the era, closing the gap at the waist that let in a draft of cold air. Instead, one layer now captured body heat right up against the skin.

In the 1700s and 1800s, people used a wooden frame placed underneath the bedcovers to create a small heated space before bedtime. Known as a moine in France and a monaco in Italy, it had a domed wooden frame that held the blankets up, with a bucket of hot embers suspended underneath and a metal plate above it to keep the heat from scorching the bedding. Unlike a warming pan, which was moved back and forth across the sheets, this contraption stayed in one spot while the warmth collected beneath the raised blankets.

The Icelandic torfbæir, or turf houses, were constructed from the 800s through to the early 1900s. They rested on a base of stone, with walls built from alternating layers of turf, peat, and soil. Each layer contained a pocket of insulating air within the wall itself. This mass helped the dwellings withstand fierce sub-arctic gusts without relying solely on fire for heat.

The mesa camilla included a round wooden table and a floor-length cloth skirt covering an under-table brasero pan, or brazier. It was filled with crushed charcoal buried under a layer of fine ash called cisco or picón, which slowly smoldered and heated the legs and lower body of anyone sitting around it. Rooms had to have some kind of ventilation, as charcoal can produce deadly levels of carbon monoxide when not vented.

In the 1800s through the early 1900s, ceramic stoneware “bed pigs” were filled with boiling water and plugged with a clay lid to make the bed nice and warm at night. Despite the name, no pigs were involved. Wool socks wrapped around the bed pig kept feet from getting burned. They were used until flexible rubber bottles came along, but ceramic was there first.

The kachelofen (tile stove) is a Central European invention from the 1200s. Smoke flows through channels of firebrick surrounded by tiles made of glazed ceramic called Kacheln. The stove acts as a thermal battery; in other words, it stores the fire’s heat and releases it gradually, so one firing can provide uniform warmth for up to 24 hours. The room slowly comes to life, but without direct exposure to the fire.

In Iran and Afghanistan, families had a clever way to keep everyone warm at once: placing a low table over a charcoal heat source and covering the whole thing with a large duvet. In Iran, this setup is called a korsi, while in Afghanistan, it is known as a sandali. The duvet, called a lahaf, trapped the warmth underneath, and the family would gather around the table, slipping their legs beneath it or even sleeping there during winter nights with just their heads poking out.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, people would heat soapstone blocks on the stove, wrap them in flannel, and use them as a warm bed or lap warmer. Soapstone is not porous, so it absorbs heat slowly, but also retains it for hours. Water trapped within more porous stones like fieldstone or granite could turn to steam and cause the stone to shatter, rather than simply retaining heat.

A staple from the late 19th century through resource conservation efforts in both World Wars, the haybox was a wooden trunk tightly stuffed with dry straw. Hot food placed within would continue to cook, utilizing its own retained thermal energy. One round of heating did double duty: as a byproduct, the box also released a bit of ambient warmth into the room, all without using any additional fuel.

From the 1700s through the early 1900s, sleigh and carriage foot warmers were metal boxes with ventilation holes on top, holding drawers of slow-burning charcoal beneath lap blankets on winter carriage rides. Pocket warmers were also used by Victorian and Edwardian travelers within their fur hand muffs. These pocket warmers were miniature versions of hot water containers made of stoneware or metal, or sticks of smokeless charcoal encased in velvet.

From the 1500s until the early 1900s, an inglenook, a deep alcove carved into a hearth wall, was a very popular way of staying warm. High-backed wooden benches called settles blocked drafts from behind while keeping sitters inside the fireplace’s direct radiant heat. Its name combines “ingle,” the Old Scots word for fire, with “nook.”

Between 1700 and the early 1900s, people slept on a heavy feather-stuffed mattress and under a lighter feather-stuffed tick, or fabric case filled with feathers. Waterfowl down trapped little pockets of air on both sides of the sleeper. No fire, no fuel, just the insulation holding warmth through the night in unheated houses.

This content was created with the help of AI.