History Of Refrigerators

History Of Refrigerators

REFRIGERATION. The preservation of winter ice, principally for cooling drinks in summer, was practiced from antiquity, when ice was stored in insulated caves. Ice cooling was so popular in America that, within a decade of the Revolution, the United States led the world in both the production and consumption of ice. As the use of ice was extended to the preservation of fish, meat, and dairy products, ice production became a major industry in the northern states, and ice was shipped not only to the southern states but to the West Indies and South America. By 1880 the demand in New York City exceeded the capacity of 160 large commercial icehouses on the Hudson River. This industry reached its peak in 1886, when 25 million pounds were "harvested" by cutting lake and river ice with horse-drawn saws. The advent of mechanical refrigeration in the nineteenth century began a slow decline in the ice trade.