Chilled: How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again, by Tom Jackson
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The refrigerator may seem mundane nowadays, but it is one of the wonders of twentieth-century science--lifesaver, food preserver, social liberator. Part historical narrative, part scientific decoder, Chilled looks at early efforts to harness the cold at the ice pits of Persia (Iranians still call their fridges the "ice pit") and ice harvests on the Regents Canal. As people learned more about what cold actually was, scientists invented machines for producing it on demand. The discovery of refrigeration and its applications features a cast of characters that includes the Ice King of Boston, Galileo, Francis Bacon, an expert on gnomes, a magician who chilled a cathedral, a Renaissance duke addicted to iced eggnog, and a Bavarian nobleman from New England.
Refrigeration technology has been crucial in some of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the last one hundred years, from the discovery of superconductors to the search for the Higgs boson. Refrigeration is needed to make soap, store penicillin, and without it, in vitro fertilization would be impossible. 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.
- Sales Rank: #450612 in Books
- Brand: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Published on: 2015-09-22
- Released on: 2015-09-22
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.75" h x 1.02" w x 5.63" l, .90 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 272 pages
Review
“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
“Jackson's chronicle of cool will give you new appreciation for the (relatively) recent and now indispensable invention.” ―Discover Magazine
“An entertaining romp through the history of refrigeration.” ―The Wall Street Journal
“Tom Jackson’s highly entertaining book Chilled . . . balances clear descriptions of scientific principles and breakthroughs with amusing (and sometimes sobering) anecdotes about the history of artificial cold.” ―Minneapolis Star Tribune
“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. This method, while popular, was also risky (stream ice often contained pollutants, which led to outbreaks of typhoid fever and more).” ―TIME Magazine
About the Author
Tom Jackson is a science writer who specializes in recasting science and technology into lively historical narratives, told through the deeds of the people that discovered them. A former zoo keeper, travel writer, buffalo catcher and filing clerk, he is the author of several books, including Physics: An Illustrated History of the Foundations of Science. He lives in Bristol, United Kingdom.
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A Fun History of a Technology
By Andy in Washington
Chilled is one of my favorite types of books. It deals with a subject that, until I opened the book, I didn’t even know I was interested in. Few things in the house seem more boring than the lowly refrigerator, it just sort of hums along, keeping things cold, and holding up the household messages. And yet, as Tom Jackson shows, it can trace its lineage back further than even the most dedicated genealogist. Finally, modern civilization is only possible with inexpensive and ubiquitous refrigeration.
=== The Good Stuff ===
* The title is almost a bit of a misnomer. The book certainly talks about the history of keeping things cold, starting with the cooling towers of the ancient Persians and ending with ultra-cold science and maglev trains. But a good portion of the material is also the history of science. To understand the modern refrigerator, you have to understand basic thermodynamics and chemistry. Jackson takes us through mankind’s struggles, from the rudimentary science of the ancient Greeks all the way to the 21st century.
* While a lot of the book is “science”, the book is designed for the layman. For example, there is a bit of the history of the discovery of various gaseous elements such as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. The author does a marvelous job of describing the detective work that went into these discoveries, but doesn’t get bogged down in the technical details. As a reader, you can appreciate the cleverness even if you don’t understand, or care to understand, the characteristics of ideal gasses. Jackson also touches on the showmen of the day, using rudimentary science to astonish kings and commoners. The performances have become grander, but any fan of modern magicians would recognize the techniques.
* Jackson does a nice job of capturing the cleverness and ingenuity that went into the developments along the way. It was enjoyable watching the intellect of man triumph over his environment as he struggles to understand his world. Even more curious to me was how often man got things “right”, even when he was all wrong. For example, Jackson relates the work of Cornelius Drebbel, a 17th century Dutch scientist. At the time, many scientists still believed the Greek theory that there were just four elements (earth, fire, water, air), and that these combined in different ways to form everything else. Using this flawed theory as a basis, Drebbel develops an explanation of weather that is remarkably similar to current science.
* The book is easy, and fun, to read. I am an engineer, so I knew quite a bit of the science and had an understanding of how refrigeration works. Still, I enjoyed reading the book, and found it a nice summary of the last 2000 years or so. Jackson touches on many different subjects and topics.
=== The Not-So-Good Stuff ===
* Some of Jackson’s explanations get a bit complicated and difficult to follow. For example, while I understand how the thermodynamics of refrigeration actually works, I found the author’s explanation of a modern refrigerator a bit tough to follow. Certainly a few diagrams might have helped (I was reading a galley proof, so these may be added in the final version), as well as some rewording. While I believe the explanation was within reach of any high-school graduate, it could have been easier.
* Some of the “history of science” gets a little far out. For example, Plato and the Greeks got pretty wrapped up in various geometrical theories about how the world really fit together- the earth was made of cubes, fire was tetrahedrons---which were really a scientific dead end. Some of this could have been skipped from the text in favor of more relevant science.
=== Summary ===
The book is a marvelous look at the last 2000 years of man’s struggle to understand his world, told from the perspective of his struggle to keep things cold. The reader is taken from the rudimentary science used by the ancient Persians to keep their wine cold all the way to modern superconductors and the cold-chain that lets us enjoy imported cheese for reasonable prices. While the obvious audience for this book is the more “science-minded” among us, certainly anyone with even a little curiosity on the subject will enjoy the book. The technobabble is kept to a minimum, and the book is certainly within range of any average high-school graduate.
* There were no references in the galley version, although there were suggestions for further reading.
=== Disclaimer ===
I was able to read an advance copy through the courtesy of the publisher and NetGalley
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
wide-ranging, engaging, vividly detailed
By B. Capossere
Chilled: How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again by Tom Jackson, is a mostly interesting and always informative look at the science of cold, at first in general application and then with specific regard to our modern idea (though it turns out to be not all that modern) of refrigeration. Though it perhaps misses some opportunities, it's an easy one to recommend for those interested in the specific concept or just the general history of science.
Jackson begins with a general overview of the basic refrigerator, its place in the
cold chain" (the links of cooling science/application that can send food around the world to our homes), and very basic science regarding entropy. He has an excellent voice from the very beginning, able to convey information both clearly and stylishly, as this passage shows:
" A refrigerator is a 'heat pump', which on the face of it is perhaps an uninspiring term. However, dig a little deeper into the concept and it reveals something rather amazing--tiny acts of rebellion against the conformity of the universe." After this very quick overview, he jumps into the history of chilling beverages and creating ice.
This part of the story begins probably a few thousand years earlier than most might expect, with explanations of how ancient cultures (Sumerians, Persians, Egyptians) used evaporative cooling to chill their wine and other drinks or make ice to do the same. Interestingly, there seemed little interest in using it with food, though Jackson explains, clearly as always, the benefits of doing so. From these cultures, Jackson tours ancient China, Japan, Korea and then shifts to Europe, which imported much of the techniques from the East, especially after Henri III
"brought the craze for iced treats to France in the last 1580s."
This is where Jackson begins to bring in the science, although since he then quickly zips back in time to Aristotle and Plato and then moves forward relatively slowly, it would be more accurate to say he brings in the philosophy of cold, the alchemy of cold, the natural history of it, and then eventually the actual science. The march through time includes a Who's Who of thinkers, alchemists, and scientists: Aristotle, Paracelsus, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Hobbes, Descartes, Galileo, Pascal, Joseph Priestly, Lavoiser and others. Even Einstein it turns out had an idea for a better refrigerator. But Jackson doesn't limit himself to the better known players, bringing in more obscure (if unfairly so he shows) thinkers and inventors as well, such as Count Rumford ("now seen as the first person to demonstrate an equivalence between motion and heat"). At least, they were unknown to me; perhaps my ignorance is showing.
Really, this long section on the growing understanding of the basic concepts of heat and cold (one cannot after all fully understand one without the other) and then the exploration of the basic science and chemistry of it as elements are discovered, gases identified, and better and better cooling science plumbed, was my favorite part of the book, and it easily stands on its own as a wonderfully lucid, detailed, and entertaining history of science, especially chemistry, beyond its focus on refrigeration. Meanwhile, the factual aspect is regularly enhanced by Jackson's keen eye for the human story and detail, as well as his sometimes wry voice, as when he writes, "As all good mysteries should, the story of how cold came under the purview of science begins with a poisoning . . . "
As he brings the science history up to the nineteenth century, Jackson turns as well to the business of ice farming, detailing the creation of icehouses and the cutting of ice blocks from northern rivers and lakes to be stored and sold, a difficult business indeed as one's profits were always at risk of, um, melting away. One business in particular, that of Frederick Tudor from Boston, gets particular focus as he goes through an almost Job-like progression of problems before his business actually sustains itself. It is here that we get the first mention of what most people probably think of as the refrigerator's precursor--the icebox.
And soon after, more than halfway through the book, Jackson finally tells us, "It's now time to talk about the refrigerator, the fridge, the cooler, the icebox. Admittedly, it has take a long time to get here. Firstly, that's because of the many centuries it took to wrangle the scientific principles . . . But also it was because artificial cooling only took off when it became clear that the natural version was no good at the job." Why no good? Well, beyond scale and convenience, there was the tiny issues of bacteria, contamination, and typhus.
I confess, the engineering aspects of the refrigeration process were less engrossing to me than the early science, but once again Jackson handles it all with a welcome level of efficiency and clarity, moving through early prototypes, shifts in the fluids/gases used, issues with the machines blowing up on occasion (hardly encouraging), and the expansion from industrial refrigeration to domestic appliances.
While Jackson explains it all swiftly and clearly, this section, particularly when he deals with the cold chain (refrigerated shipping via ship, rail, and truck), is the area where I felt he missed some chances to deepen the topic and explore the impact of refrigeration more fully from a cultural standpoint. He does at times touch upon this, as when he briefly mentions some cultural differences toward refrigeration and food shopping between Europeans and Americans, or how "housewives . . . were freed from buying food everyday and they were no longer compelled to slave away preserving perishables" (and how this in turn led to the supermarket). But there were, for me, too few such references and the ones that were present didn't follow the path far enough or deep enough. But this is a relatively minor complaint in the overall excellence of the book.
From here Jackson jumps into some probably lesser known effects of the science of refrigeration in modern life beyond food preservation, explaining for example its necessity in neon lighting, steel making, MRIs, the CERN particle accelerator (discoverer of the Higgs Boson), space flight, and cryogenics.
Outside of my desire that he had examined in more depth the impact on our modern culture in terms of say sociology, politics, the environment--there's really nothing to complain about here and a lot to enjoy. Is the refrigerator, as he says at one point, "humanity's greatest achievement"? Well, I don't know about that, though he makes a good effort at making that point. But its development certainly makes for an interesting and wide-ranging tale. Especially in Jackson's capable hands. Recommended.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Catch Cold !
By Keith Otis Edwards
Why do schools teach only political and military history, when our lives have been made much different from those of our ancestors not by politicians or generals, but by experimenters and tinkerers. Why can you name (at least some of) the wives of Henry VIII, but — considering how you are able to read this — you have no knowledge of the late Doug Engelbart. Did Millard Fillmore change the way we live to the degree that Edwin Howard Armstrong did?
That's why, despite its faults, I enjoyed Chilled so much. It's a feast of science trivia. Tom Jackson writes with a dry British wit, and he dumbs such abstruse topics as quantum mechanics down enough for me to almost understand. Quantum mechanics? Be advised that modern mechanical refrigeration is only discussed in a small portion of this book, beginning at page 161. More of the book is devoted to what heat and cold actually are, beginning with the four elements of the ancient Greeks, Earth, Air Fire and Water. He then goes off on a further tangent by discussing the ancient theory of disease as an imbalance of temperaments. I found the most interesting chapters to be those discussing the scientific and engineering advances in ultra-cold, near absolute zero.
Americans seem to think that we invented everything (there are many perfectly awful book for sale here which state with confidence that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb and movies), so it's good to get such history from a British perspective, but it turns out that, while humans have always been trying to keep things cool, the modern practice of refrigeration through transporting and selling ice was mainly a Yankee enterprise. (We in the Blue states have 55 words for snow and ice — that is, 53 in addition to snow and ice.) I was amused to read that when mechanical ice-making was developed, "all natural" ice (harvested from sewage-filled lakes and rivers) was advertised as being healthier.
Unfortunately, the American reader may stumble over some of the British style favoured by Jackson. Words such as "clerihew" and "punnet" sent me scrambling for the dictionary, and some of the sentences offended my retinas. On page 234, he begins using the names of corporations as plural entities: "Google do the same thing . . ." on an irregular basis. On page 264, "A beam of photons are emitted . . ."
I don't blame Jackson for this as much as I blame the cheap-ast publishers of today who don't bother to edit books. (H. L. Mencken said that no man can proofread his own work.) But there are so many bad sentences: Page 224 " . . . materials made of intricate crystals not a million miles away from ceramics." Page 174: "But his one used sulphuric acid . . ." Page 201: "To compound the issue, apples left to ripen erupted with maggots — more probably moth caterpillars, but the, afflicted would not thank you . . ."
Page 225: "Instead, at the every edge of absolute zero . . ."
Yes, it has come to this. Publishers are either allowing the author's typos through, or I notice that this edition was typeset in India, so they're sacrificing quality to take advantage of cheap labour. Furthermore, after one reading, the flimsy binding has begun to loosen. Bad show, pinch-penny Brits.
The errors in fact, however, are definitely the fault of the author. Alfred Nobel [pg. 222] did not invent explosives, nor was he the first to synthesize nitroglycerin. On page 235, the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima was not named "Fat Boy," and the Ivy Mike H-bomb was not the "largest artificial explosion yet seen on earth." (That honor belongs to the Soviet "Tsar Bomba" of 1961, which had five times the yield of Ivy Mike.) Thomas should've stuck with plain refrigeration.
Despite such unfortunate errors, I enjoyed reading Chilled very much, and it made me reflect that we are the first generation of humans to live most of our lives in an artificial environment. As a child, I can recall the discomfort of trying to sleep during sweltering summer nights with insects banging on the screens. When my father was a boy, any water in his bedroom froze during the winter. Now, except for the walk to the car, we live in an ideal temperature and ideal humidity. Humans have conquered temperature — except for the problem of all the energy it takes to achieve our artificial environment.
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