User:Robert Hawkins05/sandbox

Bobby Hawkins' Draft

Ice Box

Refrigeration Nation: A History Of Ice, Appliances, And Enterprise In America - Johnathon Reese 2013-12-15

Refrigeration is an underappreciated appliance in America, until of course it fails. The Wikipedia article is underdeveloped and does not include basic information such as who invented the ice box and very vague information such as when the ice box was first introduced to homes. The article also only has two sources.

Use of past tense is still common in the article, and the talk page discusses to change this as iceboxes still exist.

Sources

- Refrigeration Nation : A History of Ice, Appliances, and Enterprise in America by Jonathan Rees 2013-12-15

- Keeping Your (Food) Cold: From Ice Harvesting To Refrigeration by Emma Grahn 2015-04-19 - Robert Hawkins

-Thomas Moore

Design

Iceboxes, invented by Thomas Moore in 1802, have hollow walls that are lined with tin or zinc and packed with various insulating materials such as cork, sawdust, straw or seaweed. A large block of ice is held in a tray or compartment near the top of the box. Cold air circulates down and around storage compartments in the lower section. Some finer models have spigots for draining ice water from a catch pan or holding tank. In cheaper models a drip pan is placed under the box and has to be emptied at least daily. The user has to replenish the melted ice, normally by obtaining new ice from an iceman.

The design of the Icebox allowed perishable foods to be stored longer than before and without the need for lengthier preservation processes such as smoking, drying, or canning. Refrigerating perishables also had the added benefit of not altering the taste of what it is preserving, unlike the other previously mentioned preservation methods.

Women delivering ice. During WWI, many women were employed as Icemen (or Ice Girls as they were called)

Icebox in the home of Woodrow Wilson.

The original Icebox was constructed by Thomas Moore out of a tin box placed inside a cedar tub. The space between this outer tub and the tin box was lined with previously harvested ice. A lid, hinged at one point, sealed the Icebox to insulate it. Originally Moore had also used rabbit fur and linen cloth, wrapped around the box, as an additional layer of insulation although this is not common in commercial iceboxes.

Iceboxes are commonly made of wood; many are handsome pieces of furniture.

Reception

Thomas Moore invited Thomas Jefferson to view his new invention, which he titled "Refrigerator." The Icebox was well received by Jefferson, and it is noted in his memorandum that he purchased one for himself. Ellen Coolidge, grand daughter of Thomas Jefferson, commented negatively about the effectiveness of the icebox in 1819. She commented that the icebox wasted ice, allowed butter to melt, and wine to be "above blood-heat." Refrigerators would later be added atop iceboxes in 1913 but in 1914, Nathaniel B Wales would invent a self contained unit that would be known as the Kelvinator. Superior self contained refrigeration units would be mass produced in 1918 by the Frigidaire company for consumption. Robert Hawkins05 (talk) 16:35, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

History

Before iceboxes became common household items, root cellars were used. The primary method was placing foods right below the freezing point, known as the 'frost line'. This provided the primary means to keep foods cold. However, foods were completely exposed to damp air, allowing spoilage to occur. Despite this, iceboxes were attractive for their small size and the desire for greater innovation. [8]

Up until this point, iceboxes were used on for personal means but not for mass manufacturing. By the 1840s, various companies appeared including Sears, The Baldwin Refrigerator Company, and the Ranney Refrigerator Company started up to get into the icebox manufacturing industry.[19] D. Eddy & Son of Boston is considered to be the first company to produce iceboxes in mass quantities. [18]

A new innovation formed due to the icebox manufacturing industry’s efforts: Air circulation. The idea for air circulation in iceboxes stems back to John Schooley, who wrote about his process in the 1856 Scientific American, a popular science magazine. Schooley described the process as “Combining an ice receptacle with the interior of a refrigerator… a continuous circulation of air shall be kept up through the ice in said receptacle and through the interior of the refrigerator… so that the circulation air shall deposit its moisture on the ice every time it passes through it, and be dried and cooled.” Schooley’s idea impacted the icebox industry through his scientific method which drastically improved the icebox performance by keeping stored food even colder [21,22,23]
*Reminder to find sources on trade shows/world's fairs* Dyck9 (talk) 16:46, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Peer Review by K8shep (talk) 11:43, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Since there are two groups doing the Icebox, I hadn't noticed that no one had reviewed your particular drafts! So far, everything is looking good. It is hard for me to tell what is original and what has been added. I can suggest that you keep going through refrigeration nation. But also, take a look at trade shows, and especially 20th c. World's Fairs for information about what people thought about the refrigerator in terms of a piece of domestic technology. For organization, having one big block of information may be hard to read through (esp. on a site like wikipedia). You might want to think about breaking it up a bit. All in all, you've done a good job here! Keep it up! K8shep (talk) 11:43, 4 April 2019 (UTC)