Obtaining and managing the cold has been a complex and often critical process for our society. A path full of obstacles and difficulties which, unlike what happened for heat sources, has seen its development only in the last few centuries. Heating rooms and cooking food with the government of fire, fireplaces and ovens, were instead among the first conquests of our species, which occurred during prehistory.
The human ability to dominate and artificially reproduce the cold has been and still is essential for preserving food, with very important consequences on the formation of our eating habits and our cultural practices related to food.
Not only that: cold storage of food and medicines has revolutionized our health and healthcare. In fact, once upon a time, many more people died from bacterial infections and stomach cancer. Just think of how the invention of the cold has allowed the storage of medicines, the transport of donor blood, and, more recently, has played a fundamental role during the vaccination campaign against the Covid19 virus. Simply put: the invention of cold was crucial to our evolution as humans.
In the first episode of “Progress and Prejudice” we will guide you on a journey through all the stages that led to the invention of the refrigerator, an appliance present today in billions of homes, which in any case collided with preconceptions and distrust during the first stages of its development.
From the first step taken by the Scottish physician William Cullen who in 1720 observed that the expansion of a gas produced cooling, to the first project on paper of a refrigerating machine based on the principle of vapor compression made by the American inventor Oliver Evans, up to the first real refrigeration machine in history created by the Australian inventor James Harrison, in 1875.
Like so many stories related to the introduction of a new technology, the one that led to the development of the refrigerator was not linear either. Every innovation also brings with it a cultural change and therefore a resistance on the part of those accustomed to, and fond of, the previous anthropological, social and economic model. This applies to all great innovations, and even the refrigerator has had to overcome fears and resistances that we have forgotten today, but which characterized the advent of this exceptional technology.