Mark Reynolds’s Reviews > Absolute Zero And The Conquest Of Cold: And the Conquest of Cold – An Acclaimed History of Temperature Science that Revolutionized Civilization > Status Update

Donald Cardwell: only [Sadi] Carnot recognized that "the vast majority of thermal and thermo-mechanical changes are ... irreversible."

... Ice could ensure the maintenance of the desired temperature and also permit the manufacturer of lager beer year-round, instead of only in winter. The arrival of significant numbers of German immigrants to the United States in the 1840s accelerated the demand for lager beer and for ice to produce it. By the 1860s American brewers were buying $1 million worth of ice each year."

"Another spur to American demand for refrigeration was the introduction of a lager beer. Before lager arrived from Germany, American beers were made by top-fermenting, a process that took place at the surface of the liquid and could occur at any temperature. Lager beer was created through the action of yeast, in a bottom-fermenting process that resulted in a mix that then had to be stored at between 47 and 55°F...

"Most of the ice used in the world was consumed in the United States. Starting in the 1820s, ice consumption more than doubled each year as Americans grew used to having ice to cool drinks and to keep food fresh in larders."

"Only near the end of the Cromwell era, in the late 1650s, did true Baconianism in science resurface, in the form of a loose cohort of scientific experimenters pledged to Baconian ideals, some of whom met first at Gresham College in London and later at Oxford."

Thus the Royal Society was born!