Posts Tagged ‘refrigeration’
“Ice contains no future, just the past, sealed away”*…
From her new book, Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks—A cool history of a hot commodity, Amy Brady…
Despite more than 150 years’ worth of study and experimentation, no one really knows why ice is slippery….
Nineteenth-century Americans used ice to store perishable foods in amounts that astounded visitors from Europe, where an ice trade had yet to be developed. Apples, for example, became so commonplace in the young republic that visitors coined the phrase “as American as apple pie.”…
By WWII, the burgeoning industry of electric refrigeration was catching up to the ice industry, and companies like the Southland Ice Company were forced to rethink their business plans. Southland began selling kitchen staples like milk and bread alongside their ice. The combination became so popular, the company extended its hours to keep up with demand, and within a few years renamed itself after its new hours of operation. The 7-Eleven was born, and convenience stores today still sell ice…
Between WWII and 1975, the amount of electricity refrigerators consumed grew by more than 350 percent. Today, a look at energy use around the globe reveals that the cooling industry (refrigerators, freezers, and air conditioners) accounts for almost 10 percent of all CO2 emissions…
Six more cool facts at “10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know about Ice,” from @ingredient_x in @Orion_Magazine.
* Haruki Murakami
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As we chill, we might recall that it was on this date in 1982 that record low temperature of -117 F was recorded in Antarctica. That record was broken the following year, also in Antarctica, at -128.6 F– a mark that stands to this date, as Antartica has been warming… leading Dr. Brady to ask, “in an age of accelerating global warming… can ice in the freezer and ice on our planetary poles continue to coexist?”
“If you have extraordinary bread and extraordinary butter, it’s hard to beat bread and butter”*…
How the thing that makes everything delicious began: “The History of Butter.”
* Jacques Pepin
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As we spread it thick, we might spare a thought for Carl Paul Gottfried Linde; he died on this date in 1934. An engineer, inventor, and businessman, he discovered an effective refrigeration cycle and invented the first industrial-scale air separation and gas liquefaction processes that he used to create the first effective refrigeration system. Linde also founded what is now known as The Linde Group, the world’s largest industrial gases company, and ushered the creation of the supply chain of industrial gases as a profitable line of businesses… so it is him we can thank for the wide-spread availability of butter (among so many other perishables).
“Earth laughs in flowers”*…
The promise of gold, oil and king crab has lured fortune seekers to Alaska for decades. But Alaska’s newest profit-making industry stems from a most unusual source: flowers. Specifically, peonies — the kind that people will delay weddings over.
To date, over 100,000 roots have been planted in the state, and because peonies take years to mature, the industry is poised for steep growth. The projected harvest in 2017 is over 1 million stems, which could bring in somewhere between $4 to $5 million in sales. Still, this is a drop in the bucket compared to worldwide peony sales — Holland alone can sell over 30 million stems in a single month. But the northernmost state in the U.S. has one advantage over all other markets.
Alaska, it turns out, is one of the few places on Earth where peonies bloom in July…
A blooming bonanza, or another Tulip Mania in the making? Find out at “From Fish to Flowers– Is Peony Farming Alaska’s Next Gold Rush?”
* Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Hamatreya”
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As we take our pick, we might send pleasantly-cool birthday greetings to John Gorrie; he was born on this date in 1803. As a young physician, Gorrie found himself in Apalachicola, Florida, where he cared for folks suffering from malaria. Noting that people in colder climes rarely got the disease, he (illogically, but correctly) concluded that ice– more generally, cold– would help treat his patients’ fever. He first suspended ice in basins above his patients to cool the air around them. Later, he built a small steam engine to drive a piston in a cylinder immersed in brine. The piston first compressed the air, and then on the second stroke, when the air expanded, it drew heat from the brine. The chilled brine was used to cool air or make ice. He was granted the first U.S. Patent for mechanical refrigeration (No. 8080) on May 1851. Dr. Gorrie’s statue stands in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.
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