Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/27

Rh introduced for such purpose. Moreover, I was under the old superstition that it was necessary to have a heat at or above the boiling-point in order to cook at all. Even Count Rumford found out by accident that meats could be cooked at a lower degree; and it was not until I happened to read Dr. Mattieu Williams's "Chemistry of Cookery" that I was led to develop the Norwegian cooking-box into the cooker with the heating attachment.

Perhaps I unwisely gave way this idea or conception which I might have patented: I had the impression that it would be adopted more rapidly; but the public have become so accustomed to the patent system in this country as to make it almost impossible to give away even an idea. I doubt if this is altogether a wholesome condition, when manufacturers wait so long for the protection of a patent before undertaking to make a good thing on a commercial scale. Nevertheless, one must accept the fact, and the cooker has not been taken up by any manufacturer. Warned by this lesson, I applied for a patent on my first "Aladdin Ovens," which were made wholly of metal, the outer oven being packed with non-heat-conducting material; but on this application I failed; this identical apparatus had been invented fifty years ago, the heat being derived from a pan of charcoal, and the patent had expired; of course, the charcoal did not meet the necessary conditions. I found, however, that the oven made wholly of metal packed with carbonate of magnesia or fossil meal would be very expensive; moreover, the outer metal skin wastes a great deal of heat. I then experimented with various compounds, and finally adopted the material of which these ovens are made, known as "indurated fiber," or paper pulp, prepared in a certain way under a patent and baked at a high heat. I applied for a patent on an oven made in this way, but the mere substitution of the pulp for the metal did not suffice to give me the patent asked for. There is therefore no patent on the construction of either of these devices. The names "Aladdin Cooker" and "Aladdin Oven" are my trade-marks, on which I may hope to hold a certain control, so that the ovens shall be made of safe material, incombustible at any degree of heat required for the work, and from which control I may possibly recover the money which I have spent on my experiments; if I do not, it will be my contribution to the public service; and if by this contribution I can do away with even a small part of the waste of good food material and with a small part of the indigestion caused by bad cooking, I shall consider myself fully compensated.

Under such conditions I may perhaps venture upon the ordinary method of citing the testimony of some of the few persons who have bought these ovens and who have made use of them. I will first give a copy of a letter from an elderly lady who visited