The Mechanical Refrigerator

Dr. Gorrie, who first used cooled air believing it would prevent malaria did not prevent the disease, but it did cool hospital rooms.  Gorrie studied physics and in 1850, demonstrated his machine using the expansion of air.  Although Gorrie didn't prove his original theory, he was on the right track.

Enter Carl von Linde, a German inventor who invented the ammonia compression machine twenty-five years later in 1875.  The way to manufacture commercial ice had come.  By 1879 there were 35 commercial ice plants in the United States, and in the next ten years increased to 200.  By1909, the number was 2000.

The ice manufacturers remained the man source of household refrigeration for some time.  The icebox still required regular delivered ice on a daily basis since there was no way to keep the ice from melting. By the 1920s the mechanical refrigerator as we know it, was just beginning to become an essential part of every middle-class household.  Only 5,000 refrigerators were manufactured in the early 1920s, and they were expensive, but ten years later that production increased to over one million units, tripling in just six years and making it more affordable to the ordinary household.

By 1950 more than 86% of farm households and 90% of urban household had mechanical refrigerators based on Dr. John Gorrie's early idea of cooled air.

Next time...Refrigeration Change Diet Once Again
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Today in Pioneer History: "On November 18, 1883, at noon American and Canadian railroads began to use four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands of local times.