No, We Didn’t Leave It Running: A History and Critique on Refrigerators
Everyday living has started to enter the realm of futurism. The novelty of “smart” household appliances was innovative years ago. But now it seems like the modern house is incomplete without some smart technology involved. One of the premiere innovations being the smart refrigerator.
The smart fridge was actually one of the earlier “smart” technologies. It had its debut in the 2000s and had great implications. It brought the idea of the house being interconnected into a reality. Its main features included tracking what food was being refrigerated and connecting it to your phone for alerts. It also can let you know if the door of the fridge is being left open. In short, it made the use of the fridge more automated. But looking way back, where there always these kinds of safeguards? Even though the internet of things phenomenon would obviously apply to recent smart fridges, I believe there exist ubicomp qualities in even the earliest of fridges.
Icehouses
If we were to go back to the oldest of old fridges, the first thing that comes up is natural refrigeration. Dedicated shacks and sheds that were geographically designed to keep food cold. Icehouses needed to be placed near lakes or other bodies of water where ice could be harvested. Then they would be layered in the house alongside insulation material. They can be underground, above ground and can even take many different architectural shapes. The main idea stayed true though, the houses needed to be built in a way where lots of ice could be kept and preserved for long periods of time.
They actually are still in use today by some people, but it is obviously not commercially relevant anymore. The immediate flaw of the icehouse is that it is susceptible to the natural elements. A heat wave could potentially ruin an icehouse’s supply, especially if the insulation isn’t secure. Another major flaw coming off of that is that there’s lots of room for user error. It is on the user to gather ice and insulation material, core elements that the icehouse needs to function. And this all has to happen within the timeframe when you can get ice in your region. Adding to that, icehouses are just not sustainable in areas that don’t have a very cold climate or aren’t adjacent to bodies of water.
Refrigeration
It wasn’t until the latter half of the 18th century that we actually saw the development of refrigeration as a concept. It was a tricky process, as it required having chemicals that could take in heat from the air and produce it into a chilled atmosphere inside a unit. Many different chemicals were used, like ethers and ammonias. The idea was to have these chemicals undergo a change of their state of matter while the refrigerator created a vacuum seal to keep the cold air inside of it. Early results were successful enough, but they were still obviously working out a lot of the kinks. At the time, it was deemed to not have a use yet. This was likely because it shares the same problem as icehouses; it simply has too much user error possible. But this time, it was dangerous for it to malfunction period. Any chemical leak would be an immediate toxic hazard to anybody using the unit. There was no preventative measure to stop this so there was no hope of this reaching commercial success.
Vapor Compression
As the more modern design of a fridge was still pending, improvements had to be made. A problem with the earlier design was that even with the cold air it could produce, it wasn’t the most sustainable. It struggled at producing ice, which is necessary for keeping a fridge alive. A solution to this was the “vapor compression system.”
The vapor compression system was a huge step for the refrigerator to make its debut into the mainstream. The idea was that a chemical would be circulated around the system in constant changes of phases to dispel any heat from the fridge. This was a step above from the earlier designs which had relied on burning through the chemical supply. This had fixed the issue of sustainability for the fridge. However there was still the issue of using toxic chemicals as the supposed fuel for the fridge. It wasn’t until the 20th Century we would get a solution for this.
Freeing Fridges with Freon
Freon-12 (or R-12, dichlorodifluoromethane) was the one way ticket for the refrigerator to become commercially successful. It’s a gaseous chemical developed with the intent to be safe to use in households. It has no color, smell and any toxic properties to people. Fridges were now an established household item of the modern world thanks to Freon-12. It actually was the main refrigerant used for fridges for almost a whole decade. Eventually, it was replaced by other later discovered chemicals that performed the job more efficiently. However, fridges would not be seen as such a necessary item today without the development of this chemical.
Advances in Today’s Refrigerators
Over the course of history, refrigeration has been a defined need of people. Back then, the main design focus for the concept was functionality above else. This makes sense as it is a user appliance that needs to perform a job 24/7 for as long as it’s use case is. Now, we no longer need to rely on natural resources or newly discovered chemicals. With the fridge now established, it’s given liberties to engineers for additional usability features. Sensors that monitor the fridge’s temperature, alarms that go off if the fridge is left open for too long, even warnings for when a fridge has malfunctioned and if the products inside might be contaminated. All of these assist the user to not only use their refrigerator but to also maintain it and properly problem solve if a malfunction occurs. Fridges have come a long way from where they have started. Before, you either needed the willpower or brains to know how to use a fridge without potentially endangering your supply or yourself. Now, even someone with no prior knowledge of a fridge could operate one. It is a product of a ubiquitous-minded development.
If we were to go back to the oldest of old fridges, the first thing that comes up is natural refrigeration. Dedicated shacks and sheds that were geographically designed to keep food cold. Icehouses needed to be placed near lakes or other bodies of water where ice could be harvested. Then they would be layered in the house alongside insulation material. They can be underground, above ground and can even take many different architectural shapes. The main idea stayed true though, the houses needed to be built in a way where lots of ice could be kept and preserved for long periods of time.
https://www.apleywoods.co.uk/uploads/4F1D2E5D_CF58.jpg
They actually are still in use today by some people, but it is obviously not commercially relevant anymore. The immediate flaw of the icehouse is that it is susceptible to the natural elements. A heat wave could potentially ruin an icehouse’s supply, especially if the insulation isn’t secure. Another major flaw coming off of that is that there’s lots of room for user error. It is on the user to gather ice and insulation material, core elements that the icehouse needs to function. And this all has to happen within the timeframe when you can get ice in your region. Adding to that, icehouses are just not sustainable in areas that don’t have a very cold climate or aren’t adjacent to bodies of water.
Refrigeration
