Refrigeration in America

Refrigeration in America
Author: Oscar Edward Anderson Jr.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2015-12-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400878772

A comprehensive study of refrigeration from its beginnings in America up to 1950, which shows its relation to our national development, records the main trends in technological progress, describes the use of refrigeration, and gives some indication of its social effects. Originally published in 1953. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Refrigeration Nation

Refrigeration Nation
Author: Jonathan Rees
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2013-12-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1421411075

How we keep food cold while the house stays warm. Only when the power goes off and food spoils do we truly appreciate how much we rely on refrigerators and freezers. In Refrigeration Nation, Jonathan Rees explores the innovative methods and gadgets that Americans have invented to keep perishable food cold—from cutting river and lake ice and shipping it to consumers for use in their iceboxes to the development of electrically powered equipment that ushered in a new age of convenience and health. As much a history of successful business practices as a history of technology, this book illustrates how refrigeration has changed the everyday lives of Americans and why it remains so important today. Beginning with the natural ice industry in 1806, Rees considers a variety of factors that drove the industry, including the point and product of consumption, issues of transportation, and technological advances. Rees also shows that how we obtain and preserve perishable food is related to our changing relationship with the natural world.

Chilled

Chilled
Author: Tom Jackson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2015-07-16
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1472911423

A thrilling, mystery-lifting narrative history of the refrigerator and the process of refrigeration The refrigerator. This white box that sits in the kitchen may seem mundane nowadays, but it is one of the wonders of 20th century science – life-saver, food-preserver and social liberator, while the science of refrigeration is crucial, not just in transporting food around the globe but in a host of branches on the scientific tree. Refrigerators, refrigeration and its discovery and applications provide the eye-opening backdrop to Chilled, the story of how science managed to rewrite the rules of food, and how the technology whirring behind every refrigerator is at play, unseen, in a surprisingly broad sweep of modern life. Part historical narrative, part scientific mystery-lifter, Chilled looks at the ice-pits of Persia (Iranians still call their fridge the 'ice-pit'), reports on a tug of war between 16 horses and the atmosphere, bears witness to ice harvests on the Regents Canal, and shows how bleeding sailors demonstrated to ship's doctors that heat is indestructible, featuring a cast of characters such as the Ice King of Boston, Galileo, Francis Bacon, and the ostracised son of a notorious 18th-century French traitor. As people learned more about what cold actually was, scientists invented machines for making it, with these first used in earnest to chill Australian lager. The principles behind those white boxes in the kitchen remain the same today, but refrigeration is not all about food – a refrigerator is needed to make soap, penicillin and orange squash; without it, IVF would be impossible. Refrigeration technology has also been crucial in some of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the last 100 years, from the discovery of superconductors to the search for the Higgs boson. And the fridge will still be pulling the strings behind the scenes as teleporters and intelligent computer brains turn our science-fiction vision of the future into fact.

Refrigeration

Refrigeration
Author: Carroll Gantz
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2015-07-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786476877

For thousands of years, humans coped with heat by harvesting and storing natural ice and devising natural cooling systems that utilized ventilation and evaporation. By the mid 1800s, people began developing huge refrigeration machines to manufacture ice. By the early 1900s, engineers developed electric domestic refrigerators, which by 1927 were affordable convenient household appliances. By then, an increasingly sophisticated public demanded more modern-looking appliances than engineers could produce, and a new breed of designers entered the manufacturing world to provide them. During the Depression, modern designs not only increased sales but resulted in the kitchen appliances we now use. Today refrigeration preserves perishable food for worldwide distribution, makes tropical climates habitable for millions, saves lives with medical applications and enables space flight.

Air-conditioning America

Air-conditioning America
Author: Gail Cooper
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801871139

Cooper demonstrates how the lure of the open air, from rooftop schoolrooms to open-air theaters to the front porch, challenged air conditioning. Americans were slow to give up the social rituals of hot-weather living - the cold drink, the cool clothes, the summer vacation - for the comforts of either the window air conditioner or the central system.

Before the Refrigerator

Before the Refrigerator
Author: Jonathan Rees
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2018-03-25
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1421424606

A historical study of how increased access to ice—decades before refrigeration—transformed American life. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Americans depended upon ice to stay cool and to keep their perishable foods fresh. Jonathan Rees tells the fascinating story of how people got ice before mechanical refrigeration came to the household. Drawing on newspapers, trade journals, and household advice books, Before the Refrigerator explains how Americans built a complex system to harvest, store, and transport ice to everyone who wanted it, even the very poor. Rees traces the evolution of the natural ice industry from its mechanization in the 1880s through its gradual collapse, which started after World War I. Meatpackers began experimenting with ice refrigeration to ship their products as early as the 1860s. Starting around 1890, large, bulky ice machines the size of small houses appeared on the scene, becoming an important source for the American ice supply. As ice machines shrunk, more people had access to better ice for a wide variety of purposes. By the early twentieth century, Rees writes, ice had become an essential tool for preserving perishable foods of all kinds, transforming what most people ate and drank every day. Reviewing all the inventions that made the ice industry possible and the way they worked together to prevent ice from melting, Rees demonstrates how technological systems can operate without a central controlling force. Before the Refrigerator is ideal for history of technology classes, food studies classes, or anyone interested in what daily life in the United States was like between 1880 and 1930. “An in-depth portrayal of a once-indispensable, life-changing technology, the former existence of which is as unknown to most of us as that of the telegraph or canal is to today’s undergraduates. . . . Rees synthesizes considerable archival research and presents interpretations of importance to scholars. . . . Before the Refrigerator is as refreshing as ice water on a hot summer day.” —Journal of American History “This fact-filled book explains how ice became an American necessity by the early twentieth century. Students in business history and history of technology courses will be fascinated to learn how macrobreweries made lager into America’s favorite beer, how cocktails became commonplace, and how burly men used to lug giant blocks of ice into American kitchens.” —Shane Hamilton, author of Trucking Country: The Road to America’s Wal-Mart Economy

Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold

Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold
Author: Tom Shachtman
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2000-12-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0547525958

“A lovely, fascinating book, which brings science to life.” —Alan Lightman Combining science, history, and adventure, Tom Shachtman “holds the reader’s attention with the skill of a novelist” as he chronicles the story of humans’ four-centuries-long quest to master the secrets of cold (Scientific American). “A disarming portrait of an exquisite, ferocious, world-ending extreme,” Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold demonstrates how temperature science produced astonishing scientific insights and applications that have revolutionized civilization (Kirkus Reviews). It also illustrates how scientific advancement, fueled by fortuitous discoveries and the efforts of determined individuals, has allowed people to adapt to—and change—the environments in which they live and work, shaping man’s very understanding of, and relationship, with the world. This “truly wonderful book” was adapted into an acclaimed documentary underwritten by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, directed by British Emmy Award winner David Dugan, and aired on the BBC and PBS’s Nova in 2008 (Library Journal). “An absorbing account to chill out with.” —Booklist

Refrigeration Systems and Applications

Refrigeration Systems and Applications
Author: Ibrahim Din¿er
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 990
Release: 2017-03-23
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1119230780

The definitive text/reference for students, researchers and practicing engineers This book provides comprehensive coverage on refrigeration systems and applications, ranging from the fundamental principles of thermodynamics to food cooling applications for a wide range of sectoral utilizations. Energy and exergy analyses as well as performance assessments through energy and exergy efficiencies and energetic and exergetic coefficients of performance are explored, and numerous analysis techniques, models, correlations and procedures are introduced with examples and case studies. There are specific sections allocated to environmental impact assessment and sustainable development studies. Also featured are discussions of important recent developments in the field, including those stemming from the author’s pioneering research. Refrigeration is a uniquely positioned multi-disciplinary field encompassing mechanical, chemical, industrial and food engineering, as well as chemistry. Its wide-ranging applications mean that the industry plays a key role in national and international economies. And it continues to be an area of active research, much of it focusing on making the technology as environmentally friendly and sustainable as possible without compromising cost efficiency and effectiveness. This substantially updated and revised edition of the classic text/reference now features two new chapters devoted to renewable-energy-based integrated refrigeration systems and environmental impact/sustainability assessment. All examples and chapter-end problems have been updated as have conversion factors and the thermophysical properties of an array of materials. Provides a solid foundation in the fundamental principles and the practical applications of refrigeration technologies Examines fundamental aspects of thermodynamics, refrigerants, as well as energy and exergy analyses and energy and exergy based performance assessment criteria and approaches Introduces environmental impact assessment methods and sustainability evaluation of refrigeration systems and applications Covers basic and advanced (and hence integrated) refrigeration cycles and systems, as well as a range of novel applications Discusses crucial industrial, technical and operational problems, as well as new performance improvement techniques and tools for better design and analysis Features clear explanations, numerous chapter-end problems and worked-out examples Refrigeration Systems and Applications, Third Edition is an indispensable working resource for researchers and practitioners in the areas of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning. It is also an ideal textbook for graduate and senior undergraduate students in mechanical, chemical, biochemical, industrial and food engineering disciplines.

How the Refrigerator Changed History

How the Refrigerator Changed History
Author: Lydia Bjornlund
Publisher: ABDO
Total Pages: 115
Release: 2015-08-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1629697710

How the Refrigerator Changed History examines the invention and evolution of the refrigerator and explores how refrigeration has changed the way people eat and live. Features include essential facts, a glossary, selected bibliography, websites, source notes, and an index, plus a timeline and maps, charts, and diagrams. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

Air-Conditioning in Modern American Architecture, 1890–1970

Air-Conditioning in Modern American Architecture, 1890–1970
Author: Joseph M. Siry
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 764
Release: 2021-03-25
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0271089008

Air-Conditioning in Modern American Architecture, 1890–1970, documents how architects made environmental technologies into resources that helped shape their spatial and formal aesthetic. In doing so, it sheds important new light on the ways in which mechanical engineering has been assimilated into the culture of architecture as one facet of its broader modernist project. Tracing the development and architectural integration of air-conditioning from its origins in the late nineteenth century to the advent of the environmental movement in the early 1970s, Joseph M. Siry shows how the incorporation of mechanical systems into modernism’s discourse of functionality profoundly shaped the work of some of the movement’s leading architects, such as Dankmar Adler, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Gordon Bunshaft, and Louis Kahn. For them, the modernist ideal of functionality was incompletely realized if it did not wholly assimilate heating, cooling, ventilating, and artificial lighting. Bridging the history of technology and the history of architecture, Siry discusses air-conditioning’s technical and social history and provides case studies of buildings by the master architects who brought this technology into the conceptual and formal project of modernism. A monumental work by a renowned expert in American modernist architecture, this book asks us to see canonical modernist buildings through a mechanical engineering–oriented lens. It will be especially valuable to scholars and students of architecture, modernism, the history of technology, and American history.