subject: A Brief History Of The Fridge, 0800 Repair Refrigerator Repairs [print this page] The humble fridgeThe humble fridge. We take this appliance for granted every single day. It keeps our food fresh, and edible, and we would be stuck without it. How would we cope if it wasnt there? How would we keep the milk fresh, and the cheese odor free?
Electric fridges are a relatively new invention. Oliver Evans, designed the first refrigeration machine. The first practical refrigerating machine was built by Jacob Perkins in 1834. Evans invented the first refrigeration device, not to keep food fresh, but to make ice for his sick patients, who he needed to cool down.
Long before Mechanical fridges were invented, food still needed to be kept chilled, or cool. Often in large country houses, there would be an ice cellar, made from concrete, which was filled in the winter months with snow and ice from the frozen lakes in the vicinity of the house.
In the early days of refrigeration, toxic, and somewhat lethal mixes of gases were used as refrigerants. This saw a number of accidents occurring when these gases escaped from the fridge. In order to combat this problem, American corporations worked together to find a safer alternative to these harmful gasses. Together they came up with Freon, a safe refrigerant. From then on Freon was used on all compressor refrigerators.
We all know that gases from refrigerators are harmful to the ozone layer. This wasnt known at the time, and was only discovered many years later, after a lot of in depth research.
In the year 1894, the first fridge was installed in the Guinness factory in Dublin. This was at a time when fridges were becoming popular.
Going even further back into history, we can see how the Chinese kept their food cold. They discovered that a container placed in brine would stay colder for longer. This was due to the fact that when brine evaporated, it absorbed heat at the same time, thus keeping the contents of the container placed within it colder for longer.
So we may take our fridges for granted, but we would struggle without them. It took a lot of hard work, research, and a few accidents along the way to come up with the marvel that is the modern day fridge. Fridges have come a long way since their creation, and now boast such features as auto defrost, and automatic climate control. Some modern fridges are even internet and TV enabled! How advanced can one fridge become?
