On Oct. 3, 1854, an industrious young man from New Haven, Connecticut, filed U.S. Patent No. 11,747. Stephen J. Gold called his patent “Improvement in Warming Houses by Steam.” Fifty years later, his son, Samuel Gold, would write:
“The first attempt at steam heating of which I have any recollection was in 1853 at Cornwall, Connecticut. My father was making experiments with steam, trying to produce a low-pressure, self-regulating steam heater, which would be safe for domestic purposes, his attention being directed to the subject on account of the weak lungs of my mother, who could not endure the Northern climate, and so went South each winter to avoid stove or furnace heat.