History

Frozen meat

Refrigeration and air conditioning has played a vital role in human existence in terms of food preservation and providing human comfort.

In today’s time, the use of any refrigerating or air conditioning equipment in every household is no longer just a kind of luxury, but a huge necessity.

For some individuals who may have inclined their career with refrigeration and air conditioning technology, though may not be highly required, it is right to have knowledge about the history of refrigeration or how it was discovered and made available until today.

The creation of mechanical refrigeration system that we have today is a product of bunch of experiments based on principles in an attempt to produce artificial cooling.   Before the last patent was introduced commercially, there were many previous attempts to reduce temperature but has failed to conquer the commercial space and just became a part of refrigeration history.

The most popular information when digging up how refrigeration was discovered begins with ice harvesting story during the ancient times in countries like China, Egypt, Rome and Persia in years 1000 BC.

This might be correct as essential part of the history, but how ice was discovered as something that can be used for some purpose is one of the best questions that must be answered with regards to knowing the origin or the discovery of refrigeration. And to put an end to this argument, here is the real history about refrigeration.

Ice harvesting during the ancient times is an act of commercializing natural ice that were available during winter. It all began when they have proven that ice can be used to prolong the lifespan of raw foods or meat.

Frozen dead bodies of animals

The theory that ice can be  used for food preservation  occurred when ancient people in China noticed that dead bodies of animals and some people who  died during winter stays intact and did not decompose in the presence of snow  during long months of winter.

This leads to the idea that meat and other raw foods does not spoil when subjected to low temperature.  When the theory has been proven to be right, people in those times learned to save ice in caves  and dugouts where they store their foods for the purpose of preservation.

When this idea become popular, natural ice became commercialized and exported into some places, where there is no enough ice produced during winter. Ice harvesting became one of the biggest industries in China, Europe and even in America.

On later years, due to the constant increase of the demand for natural ice for commercial purposes, supply became scarce due to the fact that natural ice is only available during winter. During summer, ice industry is paralyzed.

The first artificial refrigeration began in 1755 when Scottish professor William Cullen designed a small refrigeration machine. Cooling was made possible by creating a partial vacuum to make the diethyl ether liquid  boiled inside a container by reducing its pressure with the use of pump. This machine produced the first artificial ice but has not been popularized.

In 1758, At Cambridge University in England, Benjamin Franklin and John Hadley worked together to study the behavior of liquid when it evaporates as possible way to cool an object.  Their study confirmed that when highly volatile fluid evaporates like ether and alcohol, it could absorb heat and cool down an object below the freezing temperature of water.

In 1805, another idea for the construction of refrigerating machine using a closed vapor compression system has been conceptualized by American inventor Oliver Evans. But Evans never materializes his idea for vapor compression refrigeration system.

In 1820, Michael Faraday an English scientist subjected ammonia and other gasses into high pressure and low temperature to liquefy. This project leads to the discovery that the condensation of gaseous substance separates the heat and the body of vapor.

In 1834, Jacob Perkins built the first working vapor-compression refrigeration system in the world. It was a closed-cycle that could operate continuously. The idea behind compressing a vapor is to increase the pressure of gas to attain what Faraday has done in 1820.

In 1842, John Gorrie, an American physician, made a similar attempt of producing artificial cooling. His   idea of producing vapor compression heat absorption system was inspired to fight malaria and other mental and physical degeneration, which he believes to be due to too much exposure to tropical heat.

Providing human comfort through air conditioning

John Gorrie’s attempt, though has failed commercially, inspired many inventors and scientist to produce more sophisticated cooling machines to cool air for health and comfort purposes.

This is the beginning of the history of air conditioning. In 1850, British patent for first vapor compression system took by Alexander Twinning.

Throughout the ages, series of changes and modification made to improve the previous refrigerating machines introduced in the market.

Even if refrigeration industry has become popular, and ice was successfully created artificially, the need for larger application arises due to increasing demand and attempt to refrigerate more larger space in a much colder temperature. This is the beginning of the creation of large compressors used both in cold storage and centralized air conditioning units.

Closed refrigeration system via vapor compression has become successful by lowering the pressure of a highly volatile fluid in a closed chamber to evaporate and absorb heat to produce cooling.  To release the heat, vapor compression is the perfect strategy to increase the pressure of the vapor to release the heat and create a new cycle of heat absorption and extraction.

To summarize the history of refrigeration and air conditioning and to know who is the greatest contributor, let me present it this way.

What we have today is just product of numerous modifications and improvements done by the new generation  to cope up with the constantly increasing demand for cooling equipment in all countries. But the materialization of mechanical refrigeration  and air conditioning system has originated as a combination of the 5 discoveries separated by years.  The rest of the texts found in many books and in Wikipedia were just mere pieces of the recorded history.