The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-05-21
THE YANKEE AND
 HIS ICE WATER America Leads in Artificial Ice
 Manufacture
  STORY OF ITS INVENTION Love for Novelty Has Made Ice skat- ing In summer-Ice Frozen In
 Bottles and Fish In
 Blocks of Ice.
STORY OF ITS INVENTION
BY FREDERIC J. HAskIN.

Not all the medical men in the world can prevail upon the American to fore go his iced drinks in the summer. Many of us look upon ice water as an all-the- year. round necessity, and great Is the howl l. the Ice trust raises the price at a critical time. Free ice funds are a feature of the sociological work of every city. Food of all kinds is pre- served by cold storage, the street drink ing fountains are cooled with ice iced soda water and soda fountain connections are sold by the million drinks day, and tho ice wagon Is ever going and go- ing from door to door.
 A well-to-do family in an English town of 100000 peoples does not know that there Is such thing as ice, so far as household purposes are concerned The butcher in the market has deep pit filled with ice in which he hangs his meats, but he will decline to sell any of it be- cause it Is so much trouble to get at it. Ginger beer and bottled soda are de- livered warm and drunk warm. In those places where Americans are wont to visit, there is ice, and of course many English people have it, but the general use which 1t mas in the United States is unknown. As in England, so fin other countries of the world-the American idea of drinking ice water all the year, of eating ices and of having fruit and salads iced, all these things are practically unknown.
 An American, pr. John Gorre of Apa- lachleola, Fla, invented the process Of making ice artificially, and so made the modern Ice trade and system of cold storage possible. Another American, Frederic Tudor of Boston, was the first man to organize a trade in natural ice. From Tudor, first, and then from Gorrie and his followers, the American Ice trade has spread all over the world in one fashion or another. There was a time when the United States sent ice to Asia. Now it sends machines to make the ice.
 The effort to alleviate human suffer- ing was the direct cause of the begin ming of both the natural ice trade and the artificial ice industry. In 1905 MT. Tudors brig "Favorite" carried a load of ice to the people of Martinique, who were stricken with an epidemic of yellow fever. The ice was not properly packed and all of it melted before 1t reached it's destination. Notwithstanding the loss of that cargo, worth about s4500, and the loss of a second sent to Havana two years later, MT. Tudor was not discouraged, and in 1S16 he secured a monopoly of the ice trade in Havana from the Spanish government and successfully launched his business. This was followed by the estab- lishment of ice ship lines to Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans. By 1883 ship ments of Ice were made from Boston to Rio Janeiro and Calcutta.
 Dr. John Gorrie, a native of Charles ton, S. C., was practicing medicine in Apalachicola, Fla. He was a scientific man and fond of making experiments. He conceived the idea of artifcially cool Ing the air in the rooms occupied by Ffe- yer patents by taking advantage of the absorption of heat from surrounding ob- jects by expanding volatile gases. He was so successful as to make actual ice as early as 1845. In 1850, in the Madison ho- tel in his home twon, he publicly ex- hibited his machine and made lee with It. He was granted the first patent for an ice making machine in the same year. The New York papers made fun of the invention and pr. Gorrie could not get enough money to enable him to make the experiments along large lines. He died in 1855, without having seen the suc- cess of the line of work which he had begun. Jacob Perkins, an American en- gineer, living in England, had made some successful experiments with cooling ap- paratus several years before. Prof. Alex ander Twining in America and James Harrison of Australia, as we'll as several French scientists, came along about the same time with experimental machines.
 But the first ice factory of importance in the world was established In New Orleans in 1866, and it became the fore runner of the thousands of plants now being operated. The Australians were first to think of freezing meat to pre- serve it for long keeping, but the notion was adopted in the United States with out moments delay.
 How to make ice by burning coal and heating water is puzzling to the uninit- iated, although the principle of the pro- cess by which it is accomplished has been the property of the human mind for paany centuries. In the absorption method ad- vantage Is taken of the fact that water will absorb many times itsA sAyalue of an- hydrous ammonia gas. This process causes absorption of the heat from the pipes through which the ammonia, lib- erated from pressure, flows and refrig- eration follows. In the compression meth oa, most generally used, the ammonia gas is compressed under high pressure and then condensed into a liquid by cool ing with water. Pressure is then re- moved and the liquid expands to a gas and ehsorbs the heat from the pipes These pipes may circulate through brine in which are immersed the cant of pure distilled water to be frozen. The brine does not freeze as quickly as pure wa ter and it's temperature is kept so low that it will freeze anything about it.
 The frosted pipes of the cold storage plant are familiar sights to most Ameri- cans. The processes used, of course there are many variations, are just the same except that instead of cooling brine to freeze water into ice. the pipes are used to cool the air to any degree of refriger- ation. Practice has brought the art of cold storage to a state approaching per- lection. Tables have been prepared show ing the exact temperature in which cef- tain articles must be kept to prevent de- cay. Fruit, for instance. may be kept for long periods of time in cold air, but IS destroyed if allowed to freeze. The same is true of eggs. Meats, fowls and fish are frozen and kept indefinitely Cars of fruit in transit are hauled into long sheds and refrigerated by air artificially cooled, thus doing away with ice boxes. Bananas especially have been successfully treated
 in this way long hauls across the con- tinent.
 Not only is cold storage used to pre- serve perishable food products, but to protect fabrics and furs from the rav- ages of insects and mildew. In every large city there are great. storage houses which take care of household furniture. upholstery, carpets, furs and clothing in