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

by Tom Jackson

A thrilling, mystery-lifting narrative history of the refrigerator and the process of refrigerationThe 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 provide the 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 – a refrigerator is needed to make soap, penicillin and 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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Technology, Food, Microhistory

273 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 16, 2015

About the author

"I'm a non-fiction author and project editor (plus I do a bit of journalism). I'm available for project development, writing, project management and I also work as a packager. Click on the links above to see examples of my work.

But first some background: Over the last 20 years, I've written books, magazine and newspaper articles, for online and for television. I get to write about a wide range of subjects, everything from axolotls to zoroastrianism. However, my specialties are natural history, technology and all things scientific. I've worked on projects with Brian May, Patrick Moore, Marcus de Sautoy and Carol Vorderman and for major international publishers, such as Dorling Kindersley, National Geographic, Scholastic, Hachette, Facts on File and BBC Magazines.

I spend my days finding fun ways of communicating all kinds of facts, new and old, to every age group and reading ability. I live in Bristol, England, with my wife and three children. I studied zoology at Bristol University and have had spells working at the zoos in Jersey and Surrey. I used to be something of a conservationist, which included planting trees in Somerset, surveying Vietnamese jungle and rescuing buffaloes from drought-ridden Zimbabwe. Writing jobs have also taken me to the Galápagos Islands, the Amazon rainforest, the coral reefs of Indonesia and the Sahara Desert. Nowadays, I can be found mainly in the attic."
~http://tomjackson.weebly.com/

Reviews

[Brian Clegg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was inclined to call Chilled a good, solid, old-fashioned popular science book. But I'm concerned that people will get the wrong idea, as I meant this as a positive thing. 'Solid' is often taken to mean stodgy and dull, but here it's a matter of being comprehensive and interesting in covering the topic of cold and coldness from the earliest ice houses of prehistory to the superconducting magnets of the Large Hadron Collider.

As for 'old-fashioned' what I meant is that the book is full of stories about the history of humanity's relationship with coldness, and producing cold where and when we want it. I've read quite a lot of trendy popular science books that are much more about the story of the writer, with only a tangential relationship to the science. While there is plenty of storytelling here, it is all about the scientific and technical content, and about the people in history (and there have been some wonderful, dramatic near failures, particular among American ice shippers) who are concerned with that science and technology. As you may gather, this is the kind of 'old-fashioned' I very much like.

Because 'cooling' is inextricably entwined with 'heating', there is a lot here about heat and thermodynamics. But still the main thrust (and most of the stories) concern our attempts to cool things down, whether it's a summertime drink or an MRI scanner. Some of the historical material is fascinating. When, for instance, the first attempts were made to take ice to the Caribbean it was a flop because no one knew what to do with it. But they did love ice-cream. And there's inevitably a lot here about fridges, where there's a whole lot of physics going on - not to mention some unintended consequences of using far too much air conditioning (really just an fridge split into two pieces). Plenty of good stuff to get your teeth into. Solid, in the sense that ice is, but water isn't.

I have a few small criticisms, but they are small. The author has a tendency sometimes to get into list mode, telling us this person did that, and this other person did the other, without enough depth to make the narrative interesting. That's by no means all of the book, but where it happens it jars a little. Also, for me, Tom Jackson writes just a bit too far towards the end of the spectrum where the science is hardly explained, but just wondered at. We don't get into enough depth in exploring the science behind the technologies of chill.

The final irritant is probably the fault of the publisher. There are comments on both the front and back covers by Tony Hawks. Now, my first inclination was to wonder what a pro skateboarder had to do with the science of cooling. But it turns out that this is Tony Hawks the comedian and raconteur. Ah, well, it's obvious what his connection is. Well, no, it isn't. Apparently he did a TV show and/or book where he went round Ireland with a fridge, and this is the only reason for having him along to give the book a puff. It seems, to say the least, a little tenuous.

So, as long as you didn't think this was a book about the chilled sport of skateboard (man), I can wholeheartedly recommend Chilled as an exploration of the history of an under-represented science and technology.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very, very slow start, lots of peripheral & pretty dull historic stuff. Need to skip ahead....

Update 12/5/16: Back to reading. At chapter 8, he finally gets to mechanical refrigeration! Note book title.

Chapter 7, on shipping ice worldwide, is pretty interesting (but also the usual mix of interesting + miscellany) . This is halfway through the book.

The whole book (so far) suffers from being one miscellaneous factoid after another, some interesting, some not. He's done lots of research, and isn't going to let any of it go to waste!

Closed out as DNF. He needed a Stern Editor!

[Vikas Datta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brings out marvellously the long and intricate (and often misguided) scholarship that went in understanding this technology...

[Bookworm · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too technical and dry for me. I picked this up on a whim: the history of refrigeration? As I live in the US I think about how large our fridges are and that in many other places they don't have refrigerators that are anything like ours. So I thought this would be a good pickup.
 
I really didn't find this as approachable as other reviewers did. Initially the history of keeping things cold (including bodies of the deceased!) by dragging ice down from the mountains (plus the rise of items like shaved iced desserts and the like in various countries) was quite fascinating.
 
But after awhile I had to skim. On occasion the author goes on tangents that would be of interest for very particular areas, but are really not relevant to what he's writing about. The text also didn't feel particularly readable for a layperson as the author also takes us through chemistry, thermodynamics, etc. It felt a little too academic for me for it to be a good/light summer read as a review elsewhere suggested.
 
As other reviews suggest, a few diagrams or pictures would have been a BIG help.
 
For the right person would be a great read but I really don't know if it's something that someone who only has a casual interest/knowledge in the subject would enjoy. Strongly suggest the library before buying.

[Judd Street · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chilled is a well-written, deep-dive style book into the history of, well, keeping things cold. From harvesting ice to the future of refrigeration, Jackson takes the reader through a wide variety of aspects of the business of cold. I learned a fair bit along the way, both about the science of how a fridge works (and, more specifically, the history of these discoveries) and about how ice was produced and kept in places that we don't typically think of as cold. I was also really intrigued by the extended history exploring the very early science of cold (i.e., conceptualizing of 'cold' as a thing at all, and trying to figure out what caused it), given temperature is such a taken-for-granted thing.

Jackson did an especially good job of documenting how science isn't always straightforward. Rather than telling a 'just-so' style of history (where every step leads, neatly and sequentially, to the current state of affairs), Jackson did a really excellent job of bringing in all the twists, turns, and false starts. The story was never linear, and great attention was given to discoveries that turned out to be false, and inventions that never really got traction.

Of course, this made the book a little more complicated. As much as I loved Jackson's approach to handling these messy histories, there were moments where I struggled as a reader to glean what science and hypotheses would turn out to be true (and I should likely remember in detail!) and which would turn out to be false explanations. I'm not entirely sure how to deal with the balance between inserting this complexity and helping the reader know what to take away from each vignette (e.g., which are science to remember, and which turned out to be false and are historical tales).

The book struggled a little in the last two chapters. By that point, we had discovered and popularized refrigerators, leaving the book feeling like it had already hit the climax. The final two chapters, then, about the future of refrigeration, felt a little bit tacked-on and less purposeful to the book's arc than those that came before. This is a relatively minor complaint, though, in an otherwise good book.

[Jack D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like others I found this book a bit confused about what it was trying to achieve. Going in I thought it would be a more high-level look into how refrigeration enables and affects our world, and how that might impact future technologies/societal development. Instead, the book is a deep dive into the science and history of refrigeration, with extreme detail given to how the chemistry, physics and engineering behind it works. Unfortunately, I found it hard to follow a lot of the science, much less retain the knowledge. As another commenter pointed out it would have been beneficial to have diagrams of some of the machines/instruments being described just to enable understanding of how they worked. I did enjoy the last few chapters which were less technical and more about the different applications and uses of refrigeration, though wish there had been a bit more on how it may shape our world in the future. Overall though I found the subject matter interesting and enjoyed learning how the old world managed to produce ice/cold chains prior to the invention of artificial refiguration.

[Kris Schnee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the most exciting history-of-science book I've read, but still it's interesting reading about one of the underpinnings of modern society: the "cold chain" of refrigerated food and medicine. It's important on such a level that we'd probably have mass famine if it vanished suddenly. Jackson's book talks about the history of the technology, from early experiments with wine-chilling and ventilation to the misadventures of the first men who tried to ship ice internationally and the invention of the modern refrigerator. I would have liked to see more about the modern cold chain itself and how it fits into the global economy, but there's still some interesting reading here. Books like this are at their best when they talk about how the technology affects people's lives, and there's some attention to that and not just to the technology itself.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I miss read this title (and the cover didn't help) and thought this was a book about fridges the object not refrigeration the concept/practice. It did a wonderful job at distilling really technical info into easy to understand terms. I had no idea how much science and philosophy I was going to encounter in this book. It had a further reading section but lacked a bibliography - combined with it's more colloquial word choices it made me wonder about the accuracy of the history in the book because I am largely unfamiliar with the topic. The ending was a bit of a grab bag that didn't wrap things up nicely.

[Popup-ch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not just a history about refrigeration, but also a lighthearted overview of the entire history of thermodynamics and some gaseous chemistry.

Jackson has a friendly tone and writes in a captivating style even on complex subjects. He manages to explain how a ridge works, without using any diagrams. While this is laudable, it would maybe have been even easier to follow if there had been some simple illustrations of the process. There are also some unexplained lacunae in the story, such as the complete absence of the Peltier effect.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was impressed by the history that propelled humanity from evaporative cooling techniques in ancient Mesopotamia to what we now know as the modern day fridge. I enjoyed the way this book opened my eyes to all that encompasses the cold chain however for me I found the first half of the book a little too detailed and dry in comparison to the second half. I can't wait to see which of those predictions in chapter 12 come to fruition in my lifetime!

[Dan V · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may have a slight bias being a philosophy major and HVAC/R technician, but this book is a fascinating history of how the technology of refrigeration has been manipulated by some of the greatest minds throughout history. This book is an enjoyable journey through time and will more than likely leave you a bit more appreciative of the hum from your refrigerator.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty solid look at the history of not just refrigeration, but the scientific exploration into what makes cold happen. The main issue I had was that it wasn't exactly what I was expecting when I chose the book, and that may be my fault: I was wanting a look at specifically refrigerators/refrigeration, not the comprehensive overview of all the things that are related to it.

[Lee-Anne Ford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining and expansive exploration of the history, and future, of cooling, rsfrigeration and freezer, that goes far beyond the kitchen appliances. It also posed one question that I found highly amusing: why is there a light in the refrigerator but no light in the freezer?

[David Hillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jackson is a children's science superstar, fun at any age.

[Dan Seitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of trivia, and the narrative is fun, but it's a bit slight and struggles a bit to hang together towards the end.

[Tyler Cymet · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://www.washingtonindependentrevie...

[Neil]

https://twitter.com/tdoggyholhol/stat...

[Dylan Heath · Rating 3 out of 5]

More interesting that well written. Got some interesting ideas for ice cream tho

[Rayfes Mondal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found the first 3/4 of this book to be too slow but enjoyed the last few chapters.

Funny how the first fruit delivered from a distance with refrigeration was looked down upon.

[Mohinudheen Shabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book feels sometimes like one of those long entries on a Wikipedia page on Refrigeration & Air conditioning with entries on history & etymology except that the language used by the author speaks to you. Pity that I couldn't pay too much attention when the discussion is on the old history of refrigeration with records concerning Refrigeration taken from the time of 18th century, with somewhere some sparks of exciting accounts, however when the modern history of refrigeration specifically mechanical refrigeration was documented, it was exciting to read since it is applications are contemporary and their effects on daily life of a commoner are seen to this present day. It is a really nice book that manages to explain complex hi-tech advances in refrigeration in novel and simple format.

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't read too much into what exactly this book was about. I thought it would be about the history of the refrigerator and keeping food cool, but instead it's a scientific history of cooling techniques (which go hand in hand with heating). I stopped reading about 100 pages in.

Despite my misinterpretation of what the book was about, I found the science dull. Granted, I'm not a science buff. But the writing is a little dry and full of dates and quick sentences that try to load too much historical context in a couple paragraphs.

If you are a science/history buff, I'd guess this might be of interest. But if you are like me and prefer a Mary Roach approach to science then skip this book.

[Misha · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half the book is 3 stars, the latter half 4.5. Th whole first part is reminded me of 20th cwntury history if science texts: this guy did x, new section, another dude did this, and choppy transitions. Then we got too much detail about Frderick Taylor and his ice shipping, but it picked up after that and it wasn't a slog to read. Not only as the first part coveing old ground for me, but in a dull way. I think the real meat of Chilled and what ai as expcting was the last third, but it needed to be padded out to make book length?

[Carl Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe more of a 3.5. The first chapter was an interesting look at ancient methods of refrigeration, but once it got into the historical part of trying to understand what cold actually was and how it worked the book got a bit dry. Once it got to a more modern setting it really took off again. I never really realized how much we rely on refrigeration, and really, as the author pointed, one break in the "cold chain" of food supplies could easily ruin us as a nation.

I never thought I'd end the year by reading a book about the history of refrigeration, but here we are...

[Patrick Pilz · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a sales engineer for prospects in the food industry, I do presentations on a weekly basis. It helps when you can tell stories, curiousities and trivia - you know your stuff.

Refrigeration and the cold chain are at the heart of the food industry, they are at the heart of this book. A long prologue on the history of cooling and a future outlook round up the book to a well told story, easily digestible on a coast-to-coast flight.

[Aiman Adlawan · Rating 5 out of 5]

That huge-box-thing in your kitchen, is your friend whenever you need something for your stomach. But its very interesting to know how a simple machine (refrigerator) in our home was developed and perfected.

This book is really interesting and such a wonderful account of how a fridge was developed. People used to cut ice from the lakes and ship them to the hot countries using the old wood ships. Imagine how they ship the ice without melting.

Really great story.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

They looked at me strangely because I was reading it for fun.

I chose this to learn and found myself entertained with the historical trivia and facts the author presented. I wasn't disappointed. You don't realize that refrigeration has been going on as long as it has. Some of these facts were absolutely fascinating.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who would ever think the history and science of refrigeration would be fascinating and make for a good read? Not me, but this book was really entertaining. I am no scientist but my eyes didn't ever glaze over even when the author got fairly technical. I really did learn a lot and just loved the author's style.

[Christina Dudley]

This history of ice and refrigeration bogged me down after a while. Having struggled with physics in high school, the account of the underground, Middle Eastern cooling systems mystified me, and the thought of going through every civilization's relation to refrigeration made me reluctant to pick the book up...

[Mitchell Kaufman · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise was good. A cultural history of refrigeration? Why not? But the execution was lacking compared to similar books. The author uses inconsistent metric to imperial conversions (10km at one point being 4 miles. At another, 7.)

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating history of refrigeration and the hundreds of years of science and pseudo-science that made it reality. The author tries to explain the physics and chemistry involved, but it can sometimes be a bit overwhelming if science isn't your forte.