In these modern times, we all take ice for granted. But if you were asked to make ice without the assistance of a freezer, how would you do it?
According to www.historyofrefrigeration.com – The “Chinese harvested ice from rivers and lakes as early as 1,000 BC. They even had religious ceremonies for filling and emptying ice cellars. Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans placed large amounts of snow into storage pits and covered it with insulating material like grass, chaff, or branches of trees. They used these pits as well as snow to cool beverages. Egyptians and ancient people of India would moisten the outside of jars and the resulting evaporation would cool the water that was inside the jars. The first group of people to use cold storage to preserve food was Persians. They invented Yakhchal, a type of an ice pit.”
So, the world needed ice and refrigeration even in ancient times! The modern refrigerator would not be invented until 1913, by Fred W. Wolf of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
In 1810, John Leslie freezes water using an air pump. Freezers would not go into mass production until after World War II, which ended on September 2, 1945.
As of 2005, 99.5% of American homes have a refrigerator.
But back in the early 1800’s, during the advent of cocktails, ice had to be harvested, and that’s where our story begins…
Reference – http://www.