Invention Of Refrigerator

Like many inventions, the refrigerator developed from earlier ideas. But if anyone can be said to have invented the machinery that led to the modern fridge, it is Jacob Perkins, who, in 1834, patented "apparatus for producing ice and cooling fluids".

Nature provided the first methods of refrigeration, most obviously through the transfer of heat to melting snow of ice, but also through the process of evaporation. The human body is cooled by evaporation, which is why we sweat, and the ancient Greeks discovered that food kept in damp earthenware jars could be kept cool by the same process, a method still in use today in some parts of the world. As early as 1775, chemist William Cullen (Scotland) recorded experiments that took the natural process of evaporation a step further, obtaining freezing temperatures by evaporating nitrous ether under reduced pressure.

More than half a century later, mechanical engineer and inventor Jacob Perkins (USA) was the first person to build a machine that out Cullen's principle to practical use. Perkins not only evaporated nitrous and sulphuric ether under reduced pressure, he also compressed the resulting gas in order to re-liquefy it so that it could be used to continue the cooling process by evaporating again; he had thus put together the essential components of a modern compression fridge. Because he was living and working in London, in 1834 Perkins took out a British patent for his invention rather that an American one.

Perkins did not exploit the commercial potential of his invention, but its principles led to the development of industrial refrigeration simultaneously in America, by Alexander Twining (USA) , and in Australia, by James Harrison (Scotland-Australia). Commercially operated refrigeration plants opened in both countries in 1850, but the first domestic refrigerator did not go on sale until 1913. This was the "Domelre" (domestic electric refrigerator), which was manufactured and first sold in Chicago, USA - the drawback from an aesthetic point of view was that the refrigeration unit mounted on top, making it look more like a piece of industrial machinery than a desirable domestic appliance.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison