a factor in Council politics and the project was suspended. This was the first time household electric stoves were produced with the express purpose of bringing "cooking by electricity ... within the reach of anyone". There are no extant examples of this stove, many of which were salvaged for their copper content during World War I. To promote the stove, David Curle Smith's wife, H. Nora Curle Smith (née Helen Nora Murdoch, and a member of the Murdoch family prominent in Australian public life), wrote a cookbook containing operating instructions and 161 recipes. Thermo-Electrical Cooking Made Easy, published in March 1907, is therefore the world's first cookbook for electric stoves. Since 1908 Three companies, in the United States, began selling electric stoves in 1908. However, sales and public acceptance were slow to develop. Early electric stoves were unsatisfactory due to the cost of electricity (compared with wood, coal, or city gas), limited power available from the electrical supply company, poor temperature regulation, and short life of heating elements. The invention of nichrome alloy for resistance wires improved the cost and durability of heating elements. As late as the 1920s, an electric stove was still considered a novelty. By the 1930s, the maturing of the technology, the decreased cost of electric power and modernized styling of electric stoves had greatly increased their acceptance. The electrical stove slowly began to replace the gas stove, especially in household kitchens. Electric stoves and other household appliances were marketed by electrical utilities to build demand for electric power. During the expansion of rural electrification, demonstrations of cooking on an electric stove were popular. Variants Early electric stoves had resistive heating coils which heated iron hotplates, on top of which the pots were placed. Eventually, composite heating elements were introduced, with the resistive wires encased in hollow metal tubes packed with magnesite. These tubes, arranged in a spiral, support the cookware directly. In the 1970s, glass-ceramic cooktops started to appear. Glass-ceramic has very low thermal conductivity and a near-zero coefficient of thermal expansion, but lets infrared radiation pass very well. Electrical heating coils or halogen lamps are used as heating elements. Because of its physical characteristics, A third technology is the induction stove, which also has a smooth glass-ceramic surface. Only ferromagnetic cookware works with induction stoves, which heat by dint of electromagnetic induction. Electricity consumption Typical electricity consumption of one heating element depending on size