ABSTRACT
In the last half of the 19th century, roughly from 1850 to the turn of the century, the principal export of the United States was cotton. The second most important export by dollar volume was ice. Americans developed methods for harvesting, storing, and transporting natural ice on a global scale. In 1810, a Maryland farmer, Thomas Moore, developed an ice-box to carry butter to market and to keep it hard until sold. This early refrigerator was an oval cedar tub with an inner sheet of metal serving as a butter container that could be surrounded on four sides by ice. A rabbit skin provided the insulated cover. Moore also developed an insulated box for home use. It featured an ice container attached to the lid and a 6 cu ft storage space below. Ice harvesting was revolutionized in 1825 when Nathaniel J. Wyeth invented a horsedrawn ice cutter (see Fig. 2.1.) It was Wyeth’s method of cutting blocks of similar size quickly and cheaply that made the bountiful supplies of natural ice resources of the United States available for food preservation. A steam-powered endless chain was developed in 1855 that could haul 600 tons of ice per hour to be stored. Wyeth and Tudor patented a means to prevent the ice blocks from freezing together by placing saw-dust between the layers. Uniform blocks reduced waste, facilitated transportation, and introduced ice to the consumer level (see Figs. 2.2 and 2.3).
