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This week Fungus goes hunting for his weekly Technology piece and finds it in his kitchen. |
While our offices, living rooms and even our bedrooms are resplendent with technology social historians will tell you that the best indicators of our level of technology-savvy come from elsewhere in the house. Off-the-cuff one would be forgiven for thinking that Science and Technology have little role to play in the kitchen but it should be kept in mind that while most countries are more-or-less on par with regard to technology related to the Internet, Defence or Space Technology it is where technology has been the slowest or the most de-glamorous in its adoption that we can best distinguish between societies. The kitchen has always been a good indicator of the level of development of a people - right from the Indus Valley Civilization to this day.
In keeping with that spirit we, at Hafta, present our pick of the three most important technological innovations, breakthroughs and inventions in the kitchen since Man discovered fire. Why? Because these wonders often go unnoticed and do not get the recognition they deserve. Why? Because we spend an unhealthy amount of time in the kitchen and cannot but help admire how technology has made life easier for us. Why? Because it is fun.
The questions we used for judging how important the technique/invention/discovery is are a) How ubiquitous is the technology? b) How much has it changed the way we work in the kitchen? and c) How terrifying is the alternative? Based on these extremely simple yet potent filters we are proud to present our pick of the three most revolutionary breakthroughs in the kitchen.
America’s most used appliance, used in over 99.5% of all American homes, the modern-day refrigerator is based on Michael Faraday’s experiments in the early 1800s of alternately compressing and de-compressing ammonia gas. Before mechanical refrigeration systems were introduced, people cooled their food with ice and snow, either found locally or brought down from the mountains. The first cellars were holes dug into the ground and lined with wood or straw and packed with snow and ice: this was the only means of refrigeration for most of history.
Refrigeration is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space, or from a substance, to lower its temperature. A refrigerator uses the evaporation of a liquid to absorb heat. The liquid, or refrigerant, used in a refrigerator evaporates at an extremely low temperature, creating freezing temperatures inside the refrigerator. It’s all based on the following physics: - a liquid is rapidly vaporized (through compression) - the quickly expanding vapour requires kinetic energy and draws the energy needed from the immediate area - which loses energy and becomes cooler. Cooling caused by the rapid expansion of gases is the primary means of refrigeration today. The term "fridge" comes from a contraction of the Frigidaire - one of General Electric’s earliest and most popular brand of refrigerators. The first known artificial refrigeration was demonstrated by William Cullen at the University of Glasgow in the mid 1700s using the process later explained by Faraday.
The refrigerator has allowed the modern family to purchase, store, freeze, prepare and preserve food products not generally found available in the natural locale. The reduction of the family garden for fresh produce has been replaced by the grocery store where multiple products can be purchased well ahead of time and retained in the home for future use. Dairy products, meats, fish, and poultry can all be kept refrigerated in the same space within the kitchen.
The refrigerator allows families to consume more salads, fresh fruits and vegetables during meals without having to own a garden or an orchard. Foods from other lands that have been imported by means of refrigeration can be enjoyed in the home due to the capability of in-home refrigeration.
The luxury of freezing allows households to purchase more foods in bulk that can be eaten at leisure while the bulk purchase provides cost savings. Ice cream, a popular commodity of the 20th century, was only available by traveling long distances to where the product was made fresh and had to be eaten on the spot. Now it is a freezer luxury. Ice on-call not only adds to the enjoyment of cold drinks, but is useful in first-aid applications, not to mention cold packs that can be kept frozen in case of emergency.
According to the 2001 Census of India, 17.5% of Indian households or 33.6 million Indian households used LPG as cooking fuel in 2001. With those kinds of numbers it is hard to ignore the significance of Liquefied Petroleum Gas in our lives today. More than LPG, specifically, we are awed by the concept of clean, compressed fuel being used for cooking. Varieties of LPG bought and sold include mixes that are primarily propane, mixes that are primarily butane, and mixes including both propane and butane. Propylene and butylenes are usually also present in small concentration. A powerful odorant, ethanethiol(ethyl mercaptan), is added so that leaks can be detected easily. LPG is manufactured during the refining of crude oil, or extracted from oil or gas streams as they emerge from the ground.
LPG goes to homes in cylinders as well as in the piped form. LPG is synthesised by refining petroleum or natural gas; it was first produced in 1910 by Dr. Walter Snelling, and the first commercial products appeared in 1912. Potential uses for LPG include replacing Freon as a non-CFC refrigerant, fuel for automobiles and as a substitute for Natural Gas as a mixture with air (Synthetic Natural Gas)
It’s the superhero of polymers. Neither heat nor cold can hurt it, no acid can attack it. But Teflon is best known for another quality: its slipperiness. Teflon was discovered by Du Pont chemist Roy Plunkett while he was studying refrigerants in 1938. Plunkett had pumped Freon gas into a cylinder and left it in cold storage overnight. The next morning he was surprised to find the cylinder empty. He sawed the cylinder open and found the gas had polymerized into a powdery white solid, polytetrafluoroethylene, which he called Teflon. Manhattan Project scientists used it to prevent corrosion from uranium. In the 1960s, Du Pont spread it on kitchen pans. This is where we come in. The technology is not ubiquitous and the alternative is not even an alternative to a lot of people just yet - it is the only way. However, the sheer magnitude of the change this wonder material promises to bring to not just the way we cook but also the way in which we regard food forced us to include it in our list.
Properly called Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) Teflon has the lowest coefficient of friction of any known solid material. It is used as a non-stick coating for pans and other cookware. PTFE is very non-reactive, and so is often used in containers and pipework for reactive chemicals. Its melting point is 327 °C, but its properties degrade above 260 °C.
PTFE is sometimes said to be a spin-off from the U.S. space program with more down-to-earth applications; this is an urban legend, as Teflon cooking pans were commonplace before Yuri Gagarin’s flight in 1961. An early advanced use was in the Manhattan Project, as a material to coat valves and seals in the pipes holding highly-reactive uranium hexafluoride in the vast uranium enrichment plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, when it was known as K416.
A lot has been said about the toxicity of Teflon and the hazards it poses to the environment. However, over the 40 years non-stick cookware has been in widespread use, there is only one published case of a minor, short-lasting health effect linked to overheating non-stick cookware.
The above is a very short list of the unsung heroes of our kitchens and our lives - each with an impact on us more far-reaching that we realise. We only hope that you regard these treasures and that treature-trove of a room with a little more regard in the future.
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Also by
- Consultation Freeze - September 4th, 2006
- Need for Speed - August 28th, 2006
- Meals on wheels - August 14th, 2006
- Whither tomorrow - August 7th, 2006
- Bombay Dreams - August 7th, 2006