China and the West

Benjamin Franklin about Chinese heating technology.
"It is said the northern Chinese have a method of warming their ground floors, which is ingenious. Those floors are made of tiles, a foot square and two inches thick, their corners being supported by bricks et on end, that are a foot long and four inches square ; the tiles, too, join into each other, by ridges and hollows along their sides. This forms a hollow under the whole floor, which on one side of the house has an opening into the air, where a fire is made, and it has a funnel rising from the other side to carry off the smoke. The fuel is a sulphurous pit coal, the smell of which in the room is thus avoided, while the floor, and of course the room is well warmed.
I conceive that burning the smoke by obliging it to descent through red coals, would in this construction be very advantages, as more heat would be given by the flame than by the smoke, and the floor being thereby kept free from soot would be more heated with less fire.
I would propose erecting the funnel close to the grate, so as to have only an iron plate between the fire and the funnel, through which plate, the aire in the funnel being heated, it will be sure to draw well, and force the smoke to descend."
On the basis of his assimilation of the Chinese heating technology, Franklin invented a fire place, which was called the Pennsylvania Fire Place.