When Americans were busy dumping tea into the dark waters of Boston harbor (late eighteenth century), a Russian gunsmith, Fedor Lisitsin, set up a small workshop south of Moscow, in the city of Tula, the heart of the Russian defense industry. Lisitsin and his two sons were laboring in their time free from making arms and ammunition for Mother Russia on a rather unusual device, which had been hitherto handcrafted by individual craftsmen in the Ural region solely for personal use: the charcoal-burning samovar.

Lisitsin's workshop was the first to produce samovars industrially and had tremendous success. Due to the blessed lack of IP law enforcement in Russia, which endures to our days, competing samovar-factories sprang up in Tula like mushrooms after the rain. By the thirties of the nineteenth century, Tula established itself as the capital of Samovar-making.

During the nineteenth century, samovars gained increasing popularity in major cities, such as St. Petersburg and Moscow, and became inseparably bound to the Russian way of life. Classics of Russian literature, like Pushkin, Gogol and Chekhov, regularly mention samovars in their works. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov has even coined an idiom, which stands for an utterly wasteful effort: to take one's own samovar to Tula. This phrase is still understood and occasionally used by most Russians (even on Linux-related mailing lists). You know, it's like writing a new C compiler for your project, instead of using GCC.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, samovar manufacturing took root in Moscow, St. Petersburg and some industrialized parts of Siberia and the Ural region. However, Tula retained its leading and standard-setting role in this trade. By that time, four shapes of samovars became traditional: cylindric, egg-like, spherical and the most beautiful of them all, those resembling the ancient Greek vase called crater.

The beginning of the twentieth century has been marked with various attempts at innovation. The traditional heating method has been challenged by gasoline, petroleum, kerosene, gas, and other means of heating at that time. However, these models proved unpopular, due to the repugnant odor of the fuels and the dangers of inflammation and explosion.

Railroad companies in Russia recognized the practicality and popularity of samovars and fitted long-distance sleeping cars with them. Luxurious cars of the Trans-Siberian railroad were first to adopt this custom. Today, all sleeping cars from second class up are equipped with a samovar at the end of the hallway, next to the conductor's closet. Just in case you need some hot water during your journey...

During World War I and the subsequent turmoil of revolutions and civil war, the design and the production technology of samovars were largely simplified and made fit for the military. It was during that time that huge samovars holding dozens of liters of water became common. Roughly welded cylindric samovars devoid of decoration are characteristic of the period.

The late twenties and early thirties saw Stalinist collectivization and industrialization. Small samovar-making workshops were integrated into vast factories or disbanded. Quantity took priority over quality. However, it was during this period that the largest samovar-manufacturer of the Soviet Union, the "Shtamp" company, was founded. In Tula, of course.

During World War II, factories of the defense industry -- and samovars have always been byproducts of military production -- were moved from the European part of the Soviet Union to behind the Ural mountain range, out of the reach of fascist intruders. Thus, skillful samovar-manufacturers and essential equipment were saved, despite the Nazi occupation of Tula.

The fifties and sixties brought significant changes. Ground-breaking technologies provided mankind with wondrous inventions: space travel, nuclear powerplants, supersonic jets, and the nickel-plated electric samovar.

The hitherto undisputed reign of the charcoal-burning samovar came to an end. The gentle flavor of smoke proved to be insufficient in the face of such benefits as the ease of use and convenience, reduced tea-brewing time and the ease of cleaning, let alone the longevity provided by the nickel-plating that protects brass from corrosion. Catering facilities and households embraced the new technology swiftly; Only the railroads remained faithful to the smoky, charcoal-fueled, traditional samovar.

The period of Brezhnevian stagnation did not leave any marks on the samovar. In fact, only the Olympic games of 1980, during which an incredible amount of samovars were sold to visitors from abroad affected the samovar: it gained international recognition and became a symbol of Russia.

While the samovars on the railroads resisted electrification, the other prerequisite of communism postulated by V. I. Lenin, ceased to exist in the nineties: the soviet power. The second dawn of capitalism in Russia brought the samovar industry back to its original shape. Recent spin-offs of the Shtamp corporation are competing for their share of the samovar-market with newly founded businesses.

A Tula company, no matter whether it produces radars, guns, refrigerators or armored vehicles, must have a samovar workshop. Thus, if you're seeking venture capital to start an ISP or a software development company in Tula, don't forget to mention samovar manufacturing in your business plan.

What does the future of samovars look like? Will the twenty-first century bring internet-enabled computer-controlled samovars that guide us through the tea-brewing process in the language of our choice? Certainly not. Two engineering principles, often overlooked by western engineers, became second nature to their Russian colleagues due to the stormy history of Russia and the constant need for working, mission-critical technology in extreme or downright hostile environments. First, we keep things as simple as possible: "the more complicated, the sooner dead" as the proverb goes. Second, one must not fix what works. During the above outlined process of evolution, the samovar achieved technical perfection: nothing to add, nothing to take away. Like a good UNIX utility, it serves one purpose, and serves it well.