Today, there is a room in our house that can trace its history back to the first open fires which early bands of humans used to cook food over. What you might not know about the kitchen, then, could come as a surprise, especially when it's realized that these fascinating rooms owe some of their development to the need to streamline work on the factory floor.
For much of human history, the kitchen as we know it was not a factor in most people's lives. Instead, outside of those wealthy enough to have a room in a home dedicated to food preparation, the open fire was considered all that was needed. Those wealthy enough, such as in Greek and Roman society in the ancient world, were the only ones able to afford a room devoted strictly to preparing of food.
Most of the other classes of people in the societies spent more of their effort in earning enough to procure cooking utensils such as pots and pans rather than in trying to build a separate cooking room. It was the Romans, however, who began to look at the problem and built a number of large kitchens for the public where they could bring their food and prepare it.
This lack of a separate room in a home was pretty much a fact of life for much of society outside of the wealthy classes throughout most of human history. Colonial Americans living in log cabins out on the frontier first began to look at their cabins with an eye towards marking off a separate area where food could be prepared. It was usually an area next to the fireplace.
Truthfully, improvements in kitchens down through the centuries since are largely the result of concurrent improvements in the design and manufacture of ranges and cook stoves. Innovations in manufacturing meant that stoves were more common which also meant that kitchens were more possible. Additionally, the availability of indoor plumbing for running water also made the kitchen more possible.
Like much of everything that has developed over the last few centuries, improvement in mass production as a result of the Industrial Revolution, led to the increasing ubiquity and low cost of stoves and refrigerators and other kitchen appliances. This made it possible for even the middle and lower classes to devote an entire room to the task of preparing of foods.
Subsequently, engineers working in factories began to look at improving kitchen design in order to enable women to spend less time in their kitchens and more time in the factories. Much of the design concepts in a kitchen today owe their ancestry to these early efforts at streamlining workflow and processes in these very small but highly efficient kitchen workspaces.
Thus -- in conjunction with urbanization and the penetration of gas, water and electrical lines throughout the country in the 20th century -- the kitchen as we know it today became fully possible even for those who were in the lower classes in the country. Soon, every housewife wanted a stove and refrigerator and manufacturers worked hard to make to design rooms where they could be accommodated.
Author Resource:
Matthew Kerridge is an expert in home improvements. If you would like further information about types of kitchen or are searching for a trusted kitchen online retailer please visit http://www.wrenkitchens.com
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