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Overview
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
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781421424606 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| Publication date: | 02/03/2022 |
| Series: | How Things Worked |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 136 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. How to Harvest Ice
2. How to Manufacture Ice
3. How Ice (and the Perishable Food It Preserved) Made It to Consumers
4. How Ice Changed the American Diet and American Life
5. How Household Refrigerators Changed the Ice Market Forever
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
What People are Saying About This
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.
Decades before refrigerators became kitchen standards, ice was being cut from ponds in the northern United States and shipped by sea, rail, and oxcart to places as distant as Hawaii and Texas. Jonathan Rees has written an eye-opening account of what was involved in this transformation of the American diet.
Before the Refrigerator is accessible, offers a unique insight that sheds light on a simple—at least at first glance—historical question, and includes multiple stories that will draw students into the subject. Well-written and backed up by ample evidence, the book is a welcome addition to the How Things Worked series.
Jonathan Rees digs into a topic that is crucial for anyone interested in the history of technology and food: the American ice industry. With clarity and concision, Rees explores the economic, cultural, and culinary changes wrought by the industry and demonstrates how it profoundly shaped American tastes themselves.
Before the Refrigerator is accessible, offers a unique insight that sheds light on a simple—at least at first glance—historical question, and includes multiple stories that will draw students into the subject. Well-written and backed up by ample evidence, the book is a welcome addition to the How Things Worked series.—Sean Patrick Adams, author of Home Fires: How Americans Kept Warm in the Nineteenth Century
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
Americans consider their refrigerators and freezers ordinary features of life. It wasn't always so, or so easy: before the fridge came the icebox, along with a whole industrial infrastructure that made ice widely available and paved the way for electrical cooling. In this fascinating and well-written book by America's leading authority on the subject, readers learn just what it means to have their frozen dinners and drinks 'on the rocks.'—Bruce Kraig, author of A Rich and Fertile Land: A History of Food in America
Decades before refrigerators became kitchen standards, ice was being cut from ponds in the northern United States and shipped by sea, rail, and oxcart to places as distant as Hawaii and Texas. Jonathan Rees has written an eye-opening account of what was involved in this transformation of the American diet.—Rachel Laudan, author of Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History
Jonathan Rees digs into a topic that is crucial for anyone interested in the history of technology and food: the American ice industry. With clarity and concision, Rees explores the economic, cultural, and culinary changes wrought by the industry and demonstrates how it profoundly shaped American tastes themselves.—Helen Zoe Veit, author of Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century
Americans consider their refrigerators and freezers ordinary features of life. It wasn't always so, or so easy: before the fridge came the icebox, along with a whole industrial infrastructure that made ice widely available and paved the way for electrical cooling. In this fascinating and well-written book by America's leading authority on the subject, readers learn just what it means to have their frozen dinners and drinks 'on the rocks.'