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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To run a mechanical refrigerator, you need a compressor driven by *something*. Home systems use electricity because it’s quiet, safe, reliable, compact, etc.
But if you are a commercial operation, you can just have a steam-powered compressor. You can have crews to feed and maintain the steam plant. Rather than burn coal to power a steam engine that turns a generator that sends electricity to a motor that turns a compressor, you can just direct-drive the compressor from the steam engine. This allows you to make ice to sell directly (for home ice boxes) and also to fill ice containers for insulated railroad cars used to keep food cold in transit.
And also you can fit such a refrigeration system on a ship so it can carry frozen meat over long distances. Electricity is needed for a practical refrigerator in your house, but it isn’t needed for frozen meat or refrigerated milk/fruit to be part of your diet.
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