Who Invented the Refrigerator?

Science often advances in the most haphazard ways. That snow and ice could be used to preserve food was probably known to some of the earliest humans. But in 1626, this idea was still so novel that English philosopher Francis Bacon died as the result of a refrigeration experiment.

The method behind modern refrigeration was discovered in 1748, but it would take nearly 60 more years for the first refrigeration system to be designed, and 30 more years for a working refrigerator to be built. And believe it or not, the first device to be called "refrigerator" was actually lined with rabbit fur.

Primitive refrigeration experiments

Francis Bacon is best known today as the originator of the Baconian method, a process of discovering causes through the use of deductive elimination and inductive reasoning. Bacon's natural curiosity would ultimately lead to his death. In March of 1626, Bacon formed the idea of using snow to preserve meat. Bacon purchased a chicken, stuffed it with snow, and as a result of this experiment, he contracted pneumonia. Bacon died a month later.

It was a Scottish doctor and chemist named William Cullen who first demonstrated the chemical process used in modern refrigeration. A refrigerator is kept cool by the vaporization of a compressed fluid. The vapor draws kinetic energy, i.e. heat, from its immediate area, and this loss of energy keeps the atmosphere cool.

Ether was the fluid used by Cullen in his demonstration at the University of Glasgow in 1748. It was purely a chemical experiment. Using a pump to remove air, Cullen created a partial vacuum over a container of ethyl ether, which began boiling as it absorbed heat from the air. This sudden heat transference even created a small amount of ice, but Cullen never realized the potential use of his experiment for refrigeration.

The first refrigerator

American inventor Oliver Evans was the first person to design a refrigeration machine, yet he never actually built one. It was common for inventors of Evans' era to conceive and even obtain patents for their designs without actually producing them. Evans did a lot of work with steam power, and one patent he obtained in 1789 for a steam carriage wasn't produced until more than 10 years later.

Evans' 1805 design of a refrigerator prototype would be modified and patented in 1834 by Jacob Perkins. But the word "refrigerator" predates either man's idea. A Maryland engineer named Thomas Moore coined the term refrigerator in 1800 for a cedar tub he designed for transporting butter. The cedar was insulated with rabbit fur, and filled with ice surrounding a sheet metal container. Moore's refrigerator would today be referred to as an icebox.

Perkins' 1834 refrigerator used a vapor compression cycle, and as it was the first constructed refrigerator to resemble today's appliances, Perkins is probably most deserving of the title "inventor of the refrigerator." It wasn't until 1911, however, that General Electric introduced a true home refrigerator. It was made out of wood, and based on a design by Marcel Audiffren, a French Cistercian monk and physics teacher.