Domestic Ice-Making Machines 1830–1930

Abstract

The permanent evolution of everyday needs, as well as the changing customs that have characterized the civilizations’ behavior along its history, have determined the dependence towards natural resources in several, specific and different temporal ways, throughout many ages. Refrigeration is a very good example, and ice supply becomes essential to the global way of life since the mid-nineteenth century. The circulation of cold air to cool foods by melting blocks of ice placed in the compartments of the so-called ice boxes used in the early part of the century, very quickly became a great improvement over previous methods of storing perishable foods. The ice obtained during the winter months was stored with this purpose in specially constructed buildings located near to the supplying river or lake, and later delivered to customers in horse-drawn wagons and railroads and, a great quantity of it, exported in the holds of sailing ships. Slowly but surely, natural ice supply became an industry into itself, to such an extent that, in the United States for example, it became the second most important export, after cotton, by dollar volume in the second half of the century. The dramatic growth of cities, the increasing distances between the consumers and the several sources of food, and the improvement in economic status of the general population fueled, not only greater demands for fresh food and the initial worry about its preservation, but promoted, in some way, other uses of ice as a natural resource too, such as for fermentation at breweries, in comfort ice-type cooling systems, crystallization of salts in chemical manufactures, several medical uses, and in intercontinental transport of frozen meat, to mention just a few. As an example, in New York City, over a 36-year period after 1843, the cyphers of consumption of natural ice increased from 12.000 tons to 1,000.000 tons.