The history
9,000 years from a hole in the roof above an open fire to a blue gas flame under a humming hood in hundreds of millions of kitchens.
For most of history, cooking meant smoke in your eyes and your lungs. People cut holes in roofs, then built chimneys, then boxed the fire inside iron stoves. In the 1800s gas arrived, and a clever burner from a German lab taught it to burn hot, clean and blue. Bottled gas carried that flame to homes with no pipes, and India has spent sixty years bringing it to almost every kitchen, with an electric hood above to pull the last of the smoke and grease outside.
c. 7000 BCE
Roof holes letting out smoke from indoor hearths
Çatalhöyük, Turkey
c. 1185
Earliest known chimney in England
Conisbrough Castle, England
1796
Scientific fireplace design
Count Rumford, England
1826
Commercial gas stove patent
James Sharp, England
1855
Burner that premixes gas and air
Robert Bunsen and Peter Desaga, Germany
1912
Home cooking with bottled LPG
Walter O. Snelling's customer, USA
1933
Maker of home range hoods (by its own account)
Vent-A-Hood, USA
1965
First Indane LPG connection
Indian Oil, Kolkata
7500 BCE – 1100
People cook on open hearths and let the smoke find its own way out, through a hole in the roof or a small flue on a clay stove.
7000 BCE
c. 7500–5600 BCE
In one of the world's oldest towns, houses were packed so tightly that people walked across the rooftops and climbed in through holes in the ceiling. Those same holes were the only ventilation, so smoke from the open hearths and ovens inside drifted up and out.
Why it mattered. Hot smoke rises, and the oldest kitchen chimney was simply a hole above the fire.
100 BCE
206 BCE–220 CE
Families in Han China were buried with small clay models of the things they used every day, including kitchen stoves. Many models show a closed firebox with holes on top for pots and a short chimney at the back, sometimes shaped like a dragon.
Why it mattered. Closing in the fire and giving smoke its own pipe is the same idea as a modern hob and duct.
1100 – 1850
Chimneys pull smoke out through the wall, great kitchens get roof vents, and scientists like Count Rumford learn how to make a fire draw properly.
1185
c. 1185
Chimneys were invented in northern Europe in about the 11th or 12th century. The earliest known one in England is at Conisbrough Castle, built around 1185. Chimneys were costly, so most ordinary homes did not have one until the 1500s and 1600s.
Why it mattered. A chimney uses a tall column of warm air to pull smoke out of the room, which is exactly what a kitchen chimney's duct does.
1338
c. 1334–1342
The Abbot's Kitchen at Glastonbury is an eight-sided stone building with a huge fireplace in each corner. Hot air and smoke rise to an outlet at the top of its pyramid roof, while cooler air comes in lower down. Big medieval kitchens often had a louver like this, a covered roof vent that let smoke out and kept rain off.
Why it mattered. Catching rising smoke high up and giving it a way out is how every cooker hood still works.
1796
Thompson, an American-born scientist, published an essay on chimney fireplaces. He made them shallower with angled sides, and narrowed the throat where smoke enters the chimney so the draught sped up. Many London houses were rebuilt to his plans and became smoke-free.
Why it mattered. He showed that the shape of the opening decides whether smoke goes up the flue or into the room, the same reason a hood has a narrow throat into its duct.
1799
1790s
Rumford also designed closed kitchen ranges with holes in the top for pots, and a cast-iron oven called the Rumford roaster. They used far less fuel than an open hearth. By the 1850s smaller cast-iron stoves were replacing brick ones in homes.
Why it mattered. A closed stove with pot holes on top is the ancestor of the hob on your kitchen counter.
1800 – 1930
Gas made from coal is piped into homes, the Bunsen burner shows how to mix gas with air for a hot blue flame, and bottled LPG is born.
1802
c. 1802 (attributed)
Winzler, a chemist, built a ‘thermolamp’ that heated wood to make a burnable gas. He is often credited with making the first gas stove in 1802, and his gas is reported to have heated rooms and cooked food. Like other early gas cooking, it stayed an experiment.
Why it mattered. It showed that a gas made in one place could be piped away and burned to cook.
1821
Seebeck noticed that a compass needle moved near a loop of two different metals when one of the joins was heated. Heat was making an electric current. A pair of metals joined like this is now called a thermocouple.
Why it mattered. Much later, a thermocouple sitting in a gas flame became the safety device that shuts the gas off if the flame goes out.
1826
Sharp patented a gas stove and went on to open a gas stove factory in 1836. The Science Museum in London keeps a sheet-iron gas cooker of his design, made around 1845 to 1855.
Why it mattered. It is widely seen as the first commercial gas cooker, the great-grandparent of the Indian gas hob.
1851
A gas stove was shown to the crowds at the Great Exhibition. Even so, most people still cooked on coal, and gas cookers only became a commercial success in England in the 1880s.
Why it mattered. New kitchen ideas can take decades to reach ordinary homes, as LPG in India would too.
1855
1854–1855
The chemist Robert Bunsen wanted a hot, clean flame for his new laboratory. The university mechanic Peter Desaga built the burner, which mixes gas with air before it burns, and made 50 of them by the time the lab opened in 1855. Michael Faraday had used a similar idea earlier.
Why it mattered. Mixing air in first gives a hot blue flame with no soot. Every gas hob burner uses this trick.
1880
The Curie brothers found that squeezing certain crystals makes an electric voltage. This is called the piezoelectric effect. Pierre later became famous for his work on radioactivity with Marie Curie.
Why it mattered. The click of a gas lighter or hob knob is a tiny hammer hitting a crystal like this to make a spark.
1889
Thorp and Marsh patented a practical coin-in-the-slot gas meter. Families could drop in a penny and get a little gas, with no big bill. In 1898 gas engineers reported that working-class homes that had rarely used gas now used much more.
Why it mattered. Paying in small amounts helped gas reach poorer homes, much like buying one LPG cylinder at a time.
1912
1910–1913
Snelling, a chemist, found that propane and similar gases in petrol turn to liquid under modest pressure. On 17 May 1912 a customer named John Gahring began using this liquefied petroleum gas for lighting and cooking at home. Snelling's patent was granted in 1913, and he sold it to Frank Phillips for $50,000.
Why it mattered. LPG can be carried in a steel cylinder to homes far from any gas pipe, which is how most Indian kitchens get their flame.
1922
Dalén won the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physics, but lost his sight in an explosion that same year. At home he saw how tired his wife was from cooking, and he invented the AGA, a heavy cooker with two hotplates and two ovens that stays warm all day.
Why it mattered. It is a reminder that kitchens were designed around real work, mostly done by women.
1920 – 2000
Electric fans move into hoods above the stove, and sparks and heat sensors make gas easier and safer to light.
1933
As electric fans spread in the 1920s and 1930s, fan-driven hoods began to replace simple open ones over stoves. Vent-A-Hood, which calls itself the first maker of home range hoods, started in 1933, building hoods in a house with a dirt floor and selling them door to door. Its fan was a centrifugal blower.
Why it mattered. A motor and blower above the stove turned the old smoke hood into the electric kitchen chimney.
1958
Faber began in 1955 making plastic goods, and in 1958 made what it calls the first kitchen hood of plexiglass. The small town of Fabriano went on to become a world centre for cooker hoods, home to both Faber and Elica.
Why it mattered. Mass-made hoods for home kitchens came out of Fabriano, and both of its big brands later built factories in India.
1969
late 1960s–1970s
From about the mid-1960s, piezo igniters moved from lighters into gas appliances; an Austrian patent for a gas stove with one was filed in 1969. Stoves also gained flame failure devices: a thermocouple in the flame holds the gas valve open, and if the flame blows out it cools and the valve snaps shut.
Why it mattered. No more matches, and far less danger of unburned gas filling the kitchen.
1971
Induction cooking had been patented as early as 1906, but Westinghouse showed its Cool Top induction range in 1971. A magnetic field heats the pan itself, so the glass top stays fairly cool. The 1973 model cost $1,500.
Why it mattered. Induction makes no flame and no burnt gas, one reason it is growing in Indian kitchens as a partner to the gas hob.
1972
1970–1972
Casoli, a vet by training, made his first kitchen hood and founded Elica in 1970. In 1972 the company showed a hood in Paris and signed its first deal with Philips. Elica later became one of the world's biggest hood makers.
Why it mattered. Italian hood makers turned the kitchen chimney into a common home appliance.
1955 – today
LPG cylinders arrive in Indian cities, then spread to villages, until almost every household has a connection.
1955
December 1955
Burmah Shell began selling LPG in Bombay under the name Burshane. At first cooking gas was a rare city luxury, and most Indian kitchens still burned wood, coal, dung cakes or kerosene.
Why it mattered. It was the first step towards the gas cylinder that now sits under most Indian hobs.
1965
22 October 1965
Indian Oil released the first Indane LPG connection in Kolkata. It started with two dealers, in Kolkata and Patna, and about 2,000 customers, many of them nervous about keeping a gas cylinder at home.
Why it mattered. Indane grew into one of the biggest LPG brands in the world, serving more than 13 crore Indian families.
1977
Twelve years after Indane began, India had only about 3.2 million LPG connections, enough for about 2.5% of households. Almost everyone else cooked on chulhas burning wood, crop waste, dung or coal, often in small rooms with no chimney.
Why it mattered. It shows how far India had to go, and how much smoke women and children were breathing.
1983
December 1983
India launched the National Programme on Improved Chulhas to save firewood and get smoke out of kitchens. Improved stoves had better fireboxes and often a flue pipe. About 3.5 crore were installed by 2003, though many studies found families stopped using them.
Why it mattered. It was an early attempt to add a chimney to the village kitchen.
2015
March 2015
The government asked better-off families to give up their LPG subsidy voluntarily. By April 2016 about 1 crore people had done so. The money was used to help pay for gas connections for poor households.
Why it mattered. It linked city kitchens to village kitchens and paved the way for Ujjwala.
2016
1 May 2016
Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana set out to give 5 crore free LPG connections to women in poor families. It passed that goal, handed over the 8 crore connection on 7 September 2019, and reached 10.33 crore by March 2025. Keeping families buying refills has been the harder part.
Why it mattered. It was one of the fastest moves from smoky chulhas to clean flames anywhere in the world.
By the numbers
Active household LPG connections of India's public oil companies, as on 1 April each year unless noted. The number more than doubled in ten years, driven by Ujjwala.
2000 – today
Doctors count the cost of smoky kitchens, and chimneys, filters and cleaner fuels become part of the everyday Indian kitchen.
2010
Elica formed Elica PB India in 2010 with Indian partner Pralhad Bhutada, and Whirlpool of India joined it in 2018. Faber's Indian arm, also based in Pune, says it has been a household name for about 25 years. Hoods catch grease with mesh or baffle filters; a baffle filter makes the smoky air turn sharply, so drops of grease fly out and stick.
Why it mattered. Frying and tadka make lots of oily smoke, so the electric chimney became a common fitting in Indian city kitchens.
2021
WHO estimates that about 2.1 billion people still cook on open fires or simple stoves burning wood, dung, crop waste, coal or kerosene. Smoke from these fires caused about 2.9 million deaths in 2021, including more than 309,000 children under five. Women and children bear most of the harm.
Why it mattered. Getting smoke out of kitchens, with clean fuel and good ventilation, saves lives.
2025
1 March 2025
India had about 32.94 crore active domestic LPG customers, more than double the 14.52 crore of April 2014. But a 2023–24 government survey found only about 60% of households used LPG as their main cooking fuel, with a third still using firewood.
Why it mattered. Having a cylinder is not the same as using it every day; the last step is making gas affordable enough to replace the chulha.
By the numbers
The share of households whose main cooking fuel is LPG or piped gas, from national surveys. It rises more slowly than connections, because many homes with a cylinder still also use a chulha.
Did you know?
In the Stone Age town of Çatalhöyük, the hole in the roof was both the front door and the chimney.
The first Indane customers in 1965 numbered only about 2,000, and many were scared to keep a gas cylinder at home.
When the Bunsen burner lab opened in Heidelberg in 1855, Peter Desaga had already built 50 burners for the students.
A piezo igniter makes its spark with no battery: a small spring hammer hits a crystal, and it can do this tens of thousands of times.
By 2024 India had more than 96 LPG or piped gas connections for every 100 households, yet only about 61% of households used them as their main fuel.
The people
1753 – 1814 · Physicist and inventor · USA, England and Bavaria
Redesigned fireplaces so they drew smoke away, and pioneered the closed kitchen range.
active 1820s – 1850s · Gas engineer and stove maker · England
Patented a gas stove in 1826 and opened a gas stove factory in 1836.
19th century · Inventor · USA
Designed the 1850 Reliance Cook Stove, with separate parts for dry baking and moist cooking.
1811 – 1899 · Chemist · Germany
Designed the burner that mixes gas and air for a clean blue flame.
1812 – 1879 · Instrument maker · Germany
The Heidelberg mechanic who built the first Bunsen burners.
1880 – 1965 · Chemist · USA
Found how to bottle propane as liquefied petroleum gas.
1869 – 1937 · Physicist and engineer · Sweden
Nobel Prize winner who, after losing his sight, invented the AGA cooker.
died 1978 · Entrepreneur · Italy
Made his first kitchen hood in 1970 and founded Elica.
20th–21st century · Entrepreneur · India
Partnered with Elica to form Elica PB India in 2010.
Where it happened
Sources
Dates marked “c.” are approximate, and historians sometimes disagree about who was first. If you spot a mistake, tell us.
↑↓ move↵ open/ or ⌘K search anywhere