From the very beginnings, people noticed that the food lasts longer if it is stored in cooler place.

Who invented the refrigerator?

To cool the foodstuffs, the first refrigerators used the natural ice. Around 1755, scottish physician William Cullen used a simple box with larger blocks of ice to keep the inner temperature low.

In the 1790 an English manufacture produced the first refrigerator for commercial purposes – it was a box with double walls where the space between these walls was filled with chopped ice.

This invention (system of walls with the interim space filled with ice) was patented by French physician Focard-Chateau later in 1801.

From natural to synthetic ice

In 1834, Jacob Perkins patented his method of freezing the water with ether vapors and the first true refrigerator (opposed to a simple ice-box) was built.

In 1873, german Carl von Linde used for the very same purpose the ammonia gas but due to the synthetic ice refrigerators unreliability these inventions have never been really adopted and people massively used the double-walls ice-filled refrigerators by 1920s.

The compression refrigerators vs the absorption refrigerators

The evaporation at low temperatures is the idea behind the up-to-date refrigerators. In 1922, two Swedish inventors, von Platen and Muntens found out that if they dissolve the ether in water and the heat the mixture, the ether will evaporize. To do so it will use the temperature of the water-ether mixture. At the end we get the ether in the form of the gas and the ice as the evaporation of the ether consumed all the heat from the mixture.

Von Platen and Muntens sold their patent to Axel Green, founder of Electrolux who converted it into commercially successful fridge used literally by masses.

The first refirgerators used gas flame to heat the ether or ammonia refrigerant and when the gas burning unit was replaced by electrical heating unit and the potential danger of conflagration was eliminated, there were no other obstacles to stop the triumph of modern refrigerators.

After the IIWW, both Siemens and Electrolux who were leaders in fridge production started to produce the compressor refrigerators.

The cooling system here was driven by electro-compressor sucking the cooling agent (first ammonia and later freons). This agent was heated under pressure (portion of the heat was directioned to the condensator grid in the back part of the fridge), liquified and then expanded in the inner part of the cooling system. There the fluid started evaporate rapidly consuming all the temperature from the inner space of the ferigerator, cooling it down.

The refrigerators are able to keep the inner temperature between 0 and 10 Celsius degree which is low enough to store the foodstuff fresh for about 1 week.