Excerpt from Personal Reminiscences of Men and Things on Long Island, Vol. 1 Improvement after improvement followed in the Frank lin until perfection was nearly attained. No special credit is due to any one individual, unless it be to Count Rumford who made a cook stove with an oven, then for the first time was learned how to bake and cook and be protected from the di rect heat of the fire, which had formerly been done in front of the blazing fire of the hearth, or in a brick oven detached from the house. From these early methods of our ancestors, from the old corner fireplace to the modern steam heat, from the old tallow candle to electricity, from the wheat shock in the field to a bag of Hecker's prepared flour were long and tedious processes of evolution. Machinery has also solved its great problem from the sickle and sythe to the reaping machine and from the old ail, which resounded on the barn oor all winter long, in separating the seed from the sheaf, is now accomplished in hours by the threshing machine where months were formerly involved. The next stage of development was from the house to the factory. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.

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