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| History Timeline |
| 1910: The "Ice Age"
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 Seeking a way to cool the rooms of his yellow-fever patients in a sweltering Florida hospital in 1842, Scottish-born Dr. John Gorrie concocts a device that blows air over buckets of ice. Giving up his medical practice to engage in time-consuming experimentation with ice-making, Gorrie receives the first U.S. patent for mechanical refrigeration in 1851. Such are the modest beginnings of air conditioning.
The mechanical refrigeration units that greet the new century are basically extensions of Gorrie's 50-year-old invention. The only thing missing: a satisfactory refrigerant.
Hardy workers fish blocks of ice off a frozen New York river at the turn of the century. The ice is hauled to nearby commercial plants - there were over 2,000 by 1909 -- and placed in large "ice boxes" for shipment to southern states. Unfortunately, there generally isn't much ice left when the shipment arrives. The ice-shipping trade proves costly, weather-dependent and unreliable. Thus, the modern age of refrigeration begins on a primitive -- and back-breaking -- note.
In 1902, after noting that the printing process worked less efficiently in the summer heat, Cornell grad Willis Carrier installs the first modern air-conditioning system in a Brooklyn color-printing plant. He later develops a centrifugal compressor for refrigeration. This concept would be the industry standard for the next two decades.
Refrigerants being tested or in use all have serious drawbacks: namely, flammability, corrosion and toxicity. While carbon dioxide solves most of the danger problems, it makes the equipment bulky or susceptible to leaks. Something has to be done before domestic or commercial refrigeration can safely be used on a worldwide scale.
Hospitality businesses including hotels, restaurants, saloons and soda fountains proved to be big markets for ice. During World War I, refrigeration in munitions factories provided the required strict control of temperatures and humidity. Allied fighting ships held carbon-dioxide machines to keep ammunition well below temperatures at which high explosives became unstable.
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