Stove whether it is run by electricity or natural gas is an important appliance in every household that cooks and bakes food. As the name suggests, the Electric stove uses electricity to produce heat to cook the food. It started replacing the wood and coal stoves to cook and bake food in the 1930s. Initially these stoves were not popular because of the high cost involved in the maintenance the stove. In those days, the supply of the electricity was limited and the cost of electrify was higher than wood and coal. And the life of the heating elements in the stove was very short.

Later when an alloy called nichrome was invented, it increased the resistance and durability of the heating elements in the stoves. This brought down the cost of the electric stoves significantly. Though the costs of these stoves were low, they were not popular because of the high electricity rates. But this changed in the1930s when the cost of electricity became affordable and the designs of the stoves were enhanced. Rapidly these stoves started gaining popularity.

Initially the electric stoves had iron hotplates to hold the pots for cooking. The resistant heating coils produced heat to the iron hotplates in the stove. The iron hotplates were slowly replaced by spiral hollow steel tube which had the heating element placed in the middle of the tube. When switched on, the steel spirals became red hot supplying more heat than the iron hotplates to cook the food more quickly.

Later in the 70s, more sophisticated glass-ceramic cook tops were introduced that used electric heating coils or the infrared halogen lamps to generate heat. These cook tops became more popular because it was easy to clean the flat cooking surface, except the plate all the other surfaces remained cool when in use. Even the plate cooled off pretty quickly after the cooking was done. Only drawback was they were a bit on the expensive side.

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The latest technology today available in the market for the electric stove is the induction cooking top. Initially this technology was used only for the commercial cooking. But now it is available for domestic use as well. These stoves are safer than the gas stoves because there is no risk of accidental gas leakage, and it is slightly less expensive than the gas stoves. It also does not produce excess heat when in use and is environment friendly