Cold!

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about Cold! Cold is something we take for granted, but do you know how much we had to fight to perfect it? Companies got in the way, greed, science, arguments, it all has added up to being able to take out ice of your refrigerator. From Ice Barons to Sickness, this is how history changed cold.

The first part is original Ice, Lake Ice. Lake Ice was ice cut from lakes in England, and was stored in houses full of straw for keeping in summer. However, Fredric Tudor, a Ice Baron, thought that if ice could be brought to the hotter areas, the equator, it could sell for much more. So, a race was brought on. As not only did they need to design a boat that could carry ice, they need stands there to hold it. So, Tudor and other Ice Barons, went on to spend millions of dollars to get rich. One problem, the natives there didn't know what to do with it, and over 3/4 of it melted before being sold. However, Tudor did succeed in America, where Ice was automatically used for martinis to sickbays.

The invention of the Industrial and Home freezers are very different. Home freezers were invented to stop death and disease, or stave it off. A doctor who went by name of John Gorrie was dealing with a breakout of malaria. He needed ice for saving his patients fevers, but the ships bringing his supplies were shipwrecked, so he had to do something radical: make a machine to make ice. With his ice supplies dwindling, he spent all the spare time he had perfecting the newly discovered air type called vacuum, which wasn't breathable but it could freeze stuff, including water. He invented a machine that could create blocks of ice, which allowed him to save his patients. He patented it, but Tudor and the Ice Barons started a campaign against it, saying it was littered with diseases.

However, they themselves began having to harvest lower quality ice, which had plenty of diseases of their own, and Gorrie's machines and others like his began to sell. However, Air Conditioning and Freezing Buildings themselves were designed for a different reason. A book company hired a newling scientist to deal with their humidity. The man's name was Willis Carrier, and he invented the first 'apparatus for treating air'. This not only lowered humidity to a null, but also made the entire building cooler. This was then minimized or enlarged by other engineers and scientists, as well as improved, until we got the air conditioners and building sized freezers that we we have today.

But what good are huge freezers if the food in them have already rotted by the time they get there? Fortunately, a invention had been made before hand that solved this problem. As most freezers slow froze, which created bigger ice crystals. These destroyed the texture of the food, and in some cases helped nullify the freezing and gave gaps for bacteria to fester. However, Clarence Birdseye, after spending some time in Labrador, Canada, he discovered that the natives there could fish, and then a month later eat it as it was then. He watched them fish, put it in a hole, and bury it. This process he dubbed 'flash freezing', which made the ice crystals smaller, keeping texture and leaving next to no room for bacteria. You can see Birds Eye peas, fish, and other frozen goods with his name on them. This also the reason that most frozen foods have 'do not refreeze' labels on them.

The results of this? One, air-conditioning let retirees in the north flood the south, which in turn turned the south republican while the north liberal. Theaters could now play in the summer, as air-conditioning made sure that films wouldn't warp and that people would actually come in, creating the summer blockbuster. Refrigerators would allow us to pass having to make insulated rooms and make entire buildings, that would let heat escape with the old design of straw, able to store food. It would also revolutionize the bar, as ice could be made on hand, allowing drinks like martinis, and 'on the rocks' were no longer expensive. And now we can freeze things anywhere, not just places which were already cold.

That's Adventure Van, chilling.