I’m curious about the really old ice boxes, but I was really wondering about the ones from the 1800s that relied on coolant and some form of evaporation.
I can’t really picture how old is physics work without electricity.
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Since no one has mentioned them yet, the Persians built Yakhchals. They had all sorts of clever passive cooling methods, wind towers (badgirs), cool air from underground aqueducts (qanats) and could make ice. The technique was to have a shallow pool of water open to the sky protected from the sun and hot winds by shade walls and as insulated from the ground as possible. At night the heating of the pool by convection or conduction is minimal while the heat loss by evaporation and especially radiation is large enough that ice forms and can be collected and stored in the basement of the Yakhchal.
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