Mark Lloyd > writes:

>The old electric stove my grandmother had had one burner that was
>thermostatically controlled. The other burners didn't have knobs, but
>rows of buttons (labeled something like "high", 'med-high", "medium",
>"med-low", "low", "simmer", "warm", "off").

My mother used to have a stove like that, but with knobs instead of
buttons. The elements in that stove were solid metal discs, not coils,
and they had multiple resistances built into them. The multi-position
switch achieved its different heat outputs by connecting various
combinations of terminals on the element to the 240 V line (it might
have used 120 V in some of the lower positions too; I no longer
remember).

So this stove did have several different continuous heat outputs,
without switching the element on and off. But modern stoves with
"infinite heat" controls are better. The coil element has low mass and
heats up (or cools down) faster, and you can have almost infinite
control over the amount of heat via the modulating control.

Most other writers in this thread are talking about infinite-heat
controls on a modern burner (or about the oven, which is
thermostatically controlled).

Dave