In 1805, Oliver Evans of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, proposed a closed cycle of compression refrigeration. And in 1844, an American physician, John Gorrie, of Apalachicola, Florida built a refrigerator based on Oliver Evans' design to make ice to cool the air for his yellow fever patients.
He made ice without any natural form of cooling by vaporizing water at low pressure. In 1853, Alexander Twining was awarded US Patent 10221 for an icemaker. In 1855, James Harrison received a similar patent for an icemaker in Australia.
Most of the early ice plants were built in southern states. Following the Civil War, the South wanted to remain as independent as possible from the north.
The earliest machine method of producing ice in the southern Untied States was by the Ferdinand Carre aqua-ammonia absorption process as improved by Daniel L Holden of San Antonio, Frances V. DeCoppet of New Orleans, Harrison D, Stratton of Philadelphia and Thomas Rankin of Dallas.
The first cold storage warehouse in New York was built in 1865 which used brine for cooling.
In 1867, Andrew Muhl built an ice-making machine in San Antonio, Texas, to help service the expanding beef industry before moving it to Waco in 1871. In 1868 a ship’s cold air machine was used on board the Anchor line’s Circassion and Strathlkevan ships that transported meat from New York to Glasgow.
In 1880 ammonia was first used as a refrigerant and in 1882 the first plate freezer was developed.
By 1900, the United States has 766 ice plants. Still, the ice machine astounded many people. The huge blocks of mice made by ice companies in the early 1900s helped fuel the US seafood industry along the East Coats and the Gulf of Mexico.
Ice production is a large business. In 2002, there were 426 commercial ice-making companies in the United States, with a combined value of shipments of $595,487,000.
Ice manufacturing
