Chilled: How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again

by Tom Jackson

Overview

The refrigerator. This white box that sits in the kitchen may seem mundane nowadays, but it is one of the wonders of 20th century science – life-saver, food-preserver and social liberator, while the science of refrigeration is crucial, not just in transporting food around the globe but in a host of branches on the scientific tree. Refrigerators, refrigeration and its discovery and applications provides the remarkable and eye-opening backdrop to Chilled, the story of how science managed to rewrite the rules of food, and how the technology whirring behind every refrigerator is at play, unseen, in a surprisingly broad sweep of modern life.

Part historical narrative, part scientific mystery-lifter, Chilled looks at the ice-pits of Persia (Iranians still call their fridge the 'ice-pit'), reports on a tug of war between 16 horses and the atmosphere, bears witness to ice harvests on the Regents Canal, and shows how bleeding sailors demonstrated to ship's doctors that heat is indestructible, featuring a cast of characters such as the Ice King of Boston, Galileo, Francis Bacon, and the ostracised son of a notorious 18th-century French traitor. As people learned more about what cold actually was, scientists invented machines for making it, with these first used in earnest to chill Australian lager. The principles behind those white boxes in the kitchen remain the same today, but refrigeration is not all about food – for example, a refrigerator is needed to make soap, penicillin or orange squash; without it, IVF would be impossible.

Refrigeration technology has also been crucial in some of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the last 100 years, from the discovery of superconductors to the search for the Higgs boson. And the fridge will still be pulling the strings behind the scenes as teleporters and intelligent computer brains turn our science-fiction vision of the future into fact.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472911421
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	07/16/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	254,611
File size:	750 KB

About the Author

Tom Jackson is a science writer based in Bristol, UK. Tom specialises in recasting science and technology into lively historical narratives. After almost 20 years of writing, Tom has uncovered a wealth of stories that help to bring technical content alive and create new ways of enjoying learning about science. In his time, Tom has been a zoo keeper, travel writer, buffalo catcher and filing clerk, but he now writes for adults and children, for books, magazines and TV.

Table of Contents

1 Old School Cool
2 Conjuring Cold
3 Applying Pressure
4 The Temper of the Air
5 Chill and the Airs
6 Going for the Motion
7 An Ice King – or Two
8 Taking the Heat
9 Living in the Chain
10 Deep Cold
11 The Hidden Chill
12 The Future is Cold

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/08/2015
Jackson (Physics: An Illustrated History of the Foundations of Science) packs an amazing amount of information into this fascinating history of humanity’s ongoing quest for refrigeration. While readers might guess that humans’ first efforts to preserve food through cold occurred with the 19th-century icebox or the 20th-century refrigerator, that’s woefully incorrect. Jackson describes elaborate efforts to preserve ice and use it as a food preservative in ancient Mesopotamia and Persia, as early as 1775 BCE. He works his way forward through the centuries, chronicling first a growing understanding of just what “cold” actually is, and then the ways and means that individuals began to profit from it. Jackson makes it clear that “it’s the fridge that makes the modern city” and that refrigeration makes possible everything from nitrogen fertilizers to the bizarre Bose-Einstein condensate, a fifth state of matter only possible at billionths of a degree above absolute zero. He also looks to the future for further advances that frigidity may make possible, noting that development of a quantum computer will almost certainly depend on scientists’ ability to wield cold and seeing the Bose-Einstein condensate as a potential component of teleportation engineering. Jackson magnificently shows that science is “cool.” (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"An entertaining romp through the history of refrigeration." —The Wall Street Journal

"Jackson’s chronicle of cool will give you new appreciation for the (relatively) recent and now indispensable invention." —Discover magazine

"To understand why electric cool is so important—which is the premise of Jackson’s new book—it helps to remember a world without it, when people relied on ice cut from ponds and rivers to preserve their food and chill their drinks." —Time magazine

"Highly entertaining." —Minneapolis Star Tribune

"There's much to wonder at in Jackson's captivating book." —starred review, Kirkus Reviews

"Packs an amazing amount of information into this fascinating history of humanity’s ongoing quest for refrigeration." —starred review, Publishers Weekly

"Jackson’s spirited explanations of centuries-old scientific experiments relating to the transmutation of gases into water, finding absolute zero, and identifying chemical elements—to name a few—will be most appreciated by readers with a strong interest in the physical sciences." —Booklist

From the Publisher

★ 2015-05-16
The lively history of refrigeration from British science writer Jackson (Mathematics: An Illustrated History of Numbers, 2012, etc.). In this brightly illuminating narrative about keeping things cold, the author begins with Egyptians and Syrians and their sweating amphorae, as well as the ice pits of the ancient Persians. Humans have conjured and commanded heat and light for 100 millennia, but to have true control over cold, especially its creation, has been a matter of the past 100 years or so. Jackson builds the story brick by brick, from those early cooling systems through the rogues, wizards, alchemists, and scientists who dedicated their work to the cooling trade. It is a marvelous, inventive lot, makers of poisonous iced drinks and supercooled water baths. The author also looks into those who first combined gases to make water and those who oversaw the design of icehouses and their miniaturization into iceboxes. The cast of important personages is huge. On one page, chosen at random, readers encounter Robert Boyle, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Pierre Gassendi, Plutarch, and Descartes, all engaged in a lively discourse about the cause of cold. Jackson is aware of the need for entertainment—"As all good mysteries should, the story of how cold came under the purview of science begins with a poisoning"—and his graceful way with hard science is impressive. In his hands, such thorny questions as, "Does squeezing a gas into a smaller volume make it hotter or only raise its pressure?" become truly engrossing. Throughout, the author explores a host of fascinating particulars, including the role of cooling in the Higgs boson cloud chamber, quantum computing, and Clarence Birdseye's fateful trip to Labrador, where he learned flash freezing from the Inuits. And today's "cold chain," the "temperature-controlled network that transports perishable foods"—is simply a wonder. There's much to wonder at in Jackson's captivating book.

Kirkus Reviews