Ice Cream Freezer, Thomas Mills & Brother, Inc., Pennsylvania, 1876
date: label: date made
content: 1876
notes: label: Description
content: Thomas and George M. Mills of Thomas Mills & Brother, a confectionary equipment company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, built this hand-cranked, 40-quart ice cream freezer in 1876. The two patented this “Improved Ice Cream Freezer” in 1870 which included innovations such as connecting the driving power to the can and dasher, suspending the vertical driving-sleeve and shaft, and introducing the hand-crank, all of which were said to improve the quality and quantity of ice-cream. The Smithsonian Institution featured this ice cream freezer the 1876 exhibit “1876: A Centennial Exhibition” held in Philadelphia. The freezer was displayed in Machinery Hall, the focal point of the exhibition that demonstrated the United States’ status as a significant emerging industrial power. In 1952, John G. Mills, the grandson of Thomas Mills and the then president of Thomas Mills & Brother, gifted the freezer to the Smithsonian Institution to contribute to materials regarding the method of ice cream production and the evolution of food processing equipment more generally in the late nineteenth century.
label: Description
content: Thomas and George M. Mills established a confectioners' equipment company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania under the guidance of their stepfather, John Gardiner. In 1864, Thomas and George named the company Thomas Mills and Brother, manufacturing confectionary, baking, and ice-cream making equipment, with one of their most notable feats being the clear toy candy mold in about 1866. According to the 1867 book “Philadelphia and its Manufactures” by Edwin Troxell Freedley, Thomas Mills & Brother was the largest confectioners’ tools company in the country at the time and had clients across the United States and Canada.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Pennsylvania
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Mechanical and Civil Engineering
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: AG.62A5
label: accession number
content: 241690
label: catalog number
content: 62A5
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Mill's Ice Cream Freezer
label: Object Name
content: freezer, ice cream
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: wood, metal (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: green, black (overall paint)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 38 in x 48 in; 96.52 cm x 121.92 cm