The origin of Refrigerators By the mid-nineteenth century, the term "icebox" had entered the American language, but ice was still only beginning to affect the diet of ordinary citizens in the United States. The ice trade grew with the growth of cities. Ice was used in hotels, taverns, and hospitals, and by some forward-looking city dealers in fresh meat, fresh fish, and butter. After the Civil War( 1861-1865),as ice was used to refrigerate freight cars, it also came into household use. Even before 1880,half of the ice sold in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and one-third of that sold in Boston and Chicago, went to families for their own use. This had become possible because a new household convenience, the icebox, a precursor of the modern refrigerator, had been invented. Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as we might now suppose. In the early nineteenth century, the knowledge of the physics of heat, which was essential to a science of refrigeration, was rudimentary. The commonsense notion that the best icebox was one that prevented the ice from melting was of course mistaken, for it was the melting of the ice that performed the cooling. Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included wrapping up the ice in blankets, which kept the ice from doing its job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventors achieve the delicate balance of insulation and circulation needed for an efficient icebox. But as early as 1803, and ingenious Maryland farmer, Thomas Moore, had been on the right track. He owned a farm about twenty miles outside the city of Washington, for which the village of Georgetown was the market center. When he used an icebox of his own design to transport his butter to market, he found that customers would pass up the rapidly melting stuff in the tubs of his competitors to pay a premium price for his butter, still fresh and hard in neat, one-pound bricks. One advantage of his icebox, Moore explained, was that farmers would no longer have to travel to market at night in order to keep their produce cool.

原產(chǎn)地的冰箱

到十九世紀(jì)中葉，這個(gè)詞“冰箱”已經(jīng)進(jìn)入了美國(guó)語(yǔ)言，但冰僅僅只是開(kāi)始影響美國(guó)普通市民的飲食。冰的買賣隨著城市的發(fā)展。冰被用在旅館，酒館，醫(yī)院以及被一些新鮮的肉，魚(yú)和黃油的前瞻性城市經(jīng)銷商。南北戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)后(1861-1865)，冰被用于冷藏貨車，同時(shí)也進(jìn)入了家庭使用。甚至在1880年，出售在紐約，費(fèi)城，巴爾的摩和一個(gè)在波士頓和芝加哥銷售的三分之一，一半的冰進(jìn)入家庭自己使用。這已成為可能，因?yàn)橐环N新的家庭設(shè)備，冰箱，即現(xiàn)代冰箱的前身，被發(fā)明了。

制造一臺(tái)有效率的冰箱并沒(méi)有那么容易，因?yàn)槲覀兿胂蟮?。在十九世紀(jì)初，該熱物理，這是必不可少的冷藏科學(xué)知識(shí)是很淺陋的。普遍的觀點(diǎn)，最好的冰箱是一個(gè)無(wú)法融化，當(dāng)然是錯(cuò)誤的，因?yàn)檎潜娜诨酥评涞谋?。然而，早期的努力，?jié)約包括冰包裹在毯子，這使自己的工作做在冰雪覆蓋的冰。直到近19世紀(jì)末，發(fā)明家達(dá)到的隔熱和有效率的冰箱所需要循環(huán)的精確平衡。

但早在1803年，天才的馬里蘭農(nóng)場(chǎng)主，托馬斯莫爾，找到了正確的軌道。他擁有一個(gè)大約二十華盛頓以外的城市，那里的喬治鎮(zhèn)村莊是集市中心英里的農(nóng)場(chǎng)。當(dāng)他用自己設(shè)計(jì)的冰箱運(yùn)送黃油去市場(chǎng)，他發(fā)現(xiàn)顧客們會(huì)走過(guò)裝在他的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)對(duì)手來(lái)支付他的黃油高價(jià)，整齊，還有一個(gè)新的和艱難，浴缸那些迅速融化磅磚。他的一個(gè)冰箱優(yōu)勢(shì)，摩爾解釋說(shuō)，農(nóng)民將不再有旅行，晚上去市場(chǎng)以保持他們產(chǎn)品的低溫。