How Cool is this !?
The Icebox
With summer on the horizon (I can dream!), it's time to look at how perishable foodstuffs were kept cool before electric refrigerators. Simple iceboxes are still common today on sailing yachts, but they used to be in every household.
The cabinet stored a block of ice in the top compartment (since cold air sinks) and the food would be kept in the lower compartment. An important feature was a drain pipe for the water melted from the ice, since an ice block in water melts a lot quicker than an ice block in air.
The ice would be harvested in the winter and spring from lakes and ponds using large ice saws, then tongs would be used to drag and lift the blocks. The ice was stored in ice houses, to be distributed until the next winter. Horse-drawn carts would deliver the ice round to people's houses in the summer.
The first recorded ice house dates from 1800 BC in Mesopotamia, but only the king had one! There is an ice house at the Fortress at Louisbourg, NS, which belonged to the military governor and had a permanent armed guard on it. By the mid-1800s, it was affordable for many houses to have an icebox, and the ice supply industry lasted until mechanical refrigeration became common in the 1940's.
Nowadays, a novel aspect of the Canadian ice industry is in supplying ice lounges for export. These are carved, then split into blocks and exported to countries like Dubai and Thailand, then reassembled lego-like to make ice restaurants within existing buildings.
The cabinet stored a block of ice in the top compartment (since cold air sinks) and the food would be kept in the lower compartment. An important feature was a drain pipe for the water melted from the ice, since an ice block in water melts a lot quicker than an ice block in air.
The ice would be harvested in the winter and spring from lakes and ponds using large ice saws, then tongs would be used to drag and lift the blocks. The ice was stored in ice houses, to be distributed until the next winter. Horse-drawn carts would deliver the ice round to people's houses in the summer.
The first recorded ice house dates from 1800 BC in Mesopotamia, but only the king had one! There is an ice house at the Fortress at Louisbourg, NS, which belonged to the military governor and had a permanent armed guard on it. By the mid-1800s, it was affordable for many houses to have an icebox, and the ice supply industry lasted until mechanical refrigeration became common in the 1940's.
Nowadays, a novel aspect of the Canadian ice industry is in supplying ice lounges for export. These are carved, then split into blocks and exported to countries like Dubai and Thailand, then reassembled lego-like to make ice restaurants within existing buildings.
