Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A Human History of Ice

Episode Date: December 11, 2021

Humans have been aware of ice for as long as there have been humans and ice. However, using ice outside of winter has always been a huge challenge, but that didn’t stop people from trying to harness and use ice even when it was well out of season. It wasn’t until relatively recently, historically speaking, that ice became something that most people could just take for granted. Learn more about ice and how humans managed to make and store it before they had electricity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Humans have been aware of ice for as long as there have been humans and ice. However, using ice outside of winter has always been a huge challenge, but that didn't stop people from trying to harness ice and to use ice even when it was out of season. It wasn't until relatively recently, historically speaking, that ice became something that most people could just take for granted. Learn more about ice and how humans managed to make it and store it before they had electricity on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep,

only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. and millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally

fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. Ice is a very strange substance as far as humanity's relationship with it goes. It's extremely common and comes from one of the cheapest substances on the planet. Yet for much of early humanity's development, we rarely or never experience.

it. When the first proto-humans were in Africa, they probably would have encountered it rarely, either during extreme weather events or if they were at sufficiently high altitude. As humans left Africa, they mostly stuck to tropical areas, but eventually they migrated further north in Asia and Europe. There, they would have encountered seasonal ice and potentially year-round ice on mountaintops. Eventually, they discovered the properties of this unique substance. It would be cold to the touch, and, in fact, could numb your body if you touched it too long. It could make beverages taste better and make them more refreshing, and it could preserve food longer. But most of all, it would disappear if you tried to preserve it or take it to a warmer place. The ability to collect and preserve

ice goes back much farther than most people realize. We know that at least as early as the 4th century BC, the ancient Persians had figured out how to preserve ice year-round in the desert. They created a building called a Yakchal, which was the Persian word for ice pit. It was a conical or onion-shaped building about two stories tall, which took advantage of the physical properties of the climate and of water. A Yakchal had insulation that came about from the thick clay walls of the structure. This would prevent the heat from outside the structure from melting the ice. The other feature which kept it cool was evaporative cooling. When the water evaporates, it reduces temperatures. The arid environment in Persia would make it easy for water to evaporate,

keeping temperatures inside cool, but the water would then condense on the walls of the inside of the structure. The Persians would collect ice and snow from the mountains during the winter and transport it to the yachtchal where it would keep for months. In some areas, if nighttime temperatures dip low enough, they could create ice inside a yachtchal. Evaporative cooling was powerful enough that it was able to be used in ancient Egypt, and occasionally they could make very small amounts of ice. In ancient Rome, they didn't have anything as sophisticated as a yachtchal, but they also really didn't need it. They had access to much more ice from the Alps. Snow would be packed up and shipped to insulated buildings where it would be purchased by rich Romans. It was documented that Emperor

Nero enjoyed wine and honey with ice. By the third century, there was a flourishing ice business in Rome with snow shops where rich Romans could go and buy snow and ice. When the Roman Empire fell, ice-tarvassing and preservation pretty much disappeared for over a thousand years in Europe. However, elsewhere in the world, ice continued to be collected and preserved. During the Tang Dynasty in China, emperors and other members of the nobility drank ice drinks with ice that came from ice houses. Mogul emperors in India had a drink called Kulfi, which was condensed milk frozen into molds.

Likewise, parts of the Muslim Caliphate would store ice for refreshments. While ice was collected and stored all over the world, the techniques were pretty much similar everywhere. It basically involved collecting ice and snow from where it was cold, then transporting it in an insulated cart to be stored in an insulated ice house. The primary insulating agent in most places was sawdust, straw, and wood. basically the same elements which were used for installation up through the 19th century. While the techniques for collecting and storing ice weren't that difficult, it was a lot of work.

Taking ice from the Himalayas or the Alps to an ice house, probably hundreds of miles away, resulted in a significant amount of product loss through melting, and it also took a large number of people and animals. This meant that in almost every culture, ice was reserved for only the elite in society. Ice made a return to Europe during the Renaissance. Once again, it was used as a way to demonstrate wealth and extravagance. Italy, France, and England all saw the use of ice houses to preserve ice. Kings would often have heaps of snow at a banquet to chill wine and to impress their guests. This was pretty much the state of ice up until the early 19th century. It was collected in the winter or from high altitudes, stored in insulated buildings, and consumed by the rich. The beginning of the change in the ice industry began in

1805 with a Boston merchant named Frederick Tudor. In 1805, ice was pretty much what it had been for thousands of years, something which was only used by the rich. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington at ice houses on their plantations, but the average person wouldn't have had access to ice outside of winter. Tudor was at a picnic with his brother William in Boston, where they were enjoying some ice cream. William commented that they would be the envy of everyone sweating down in the colonies in the Caribbean with their ice cream. It was just an offhand comment, but it stuck with Frederick Tudor. New England had lots of ice in the winter. It was literally just there for the taking in any lake or pond.

He figured he could harvest the ice in the winter and ship it down to the Caribbean for purchase by wealthy Europeans. He built an ice house on the island of Martinique and began to ship ice. Almost everyone thought that his enterprise was a joke. When his first shipment of ice went out, the Boston Gazette reported, quote, No joke. A vessel with a cargo of 80 tons of ice has cleared out from this port for Martinique. We hope this will not prove to be a slippery. speculation." It took a while for people in the Caribbean to take to ice because they had never

really had any before. But soon they did, and Tudor expanded his business to other islands. Within years, he had an operation that was shipping ice to the American South, Europe, India, and even as far as Australia. He developed the moniker, the Ice King. In the 1820s, other cold weather countries began to get in on the act. Norway began harvesting and exporting ice to London. Tudor applied modern industrial thinking of the ice business, which hadn't been done before. He created a horse-drawn saw to more quickly and easily cut ice on lakes. He created an assembly line system where huge slabs of ice would be cut, floated down river, and collected by a conveyor belt,

where they were then stacked as high as 80 feet. He realized that the insulated ships and carriages, which he transported the ice, could also be used to refrigerate food and allow it to keep longer. He also traveled to southern cities in the U.S. to create demand, having tavern owners chill beverages for their clients and giving out free samples. Ice began to be used on a regular basis for the preservation of fish, meat, and even beer. As the infrastructure around ice began to grow, the cost of ice began to drop, and it was no longer something that was just for the rich.

In the early 19th century, only 10% of harvested ice would make its way to the end consumer. 90% of the ice was lost to melting. By the end of the 19th century, only 20% to 50% of the ice was lost to melting due to improved insulation techniques. By mid-century, the biggest market for the New England ice industry was large cities on the east coast of the United States, like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Iceboxes became important additions to homes, and residential ice delivery sprang up in many cities. Periodic ice deliveries would allow average people to have ice in their homes to keep products like milk and meat cool. In the 1880s, New York City alone had 1,500 ice delivery wagons. A major

development in the mid-19th century was the creation of industrial-made ice. During the During the U.S. Civil War, there were several years that were known as ice famines due to the warm winters with rivers and lakes not freezing over in New England. There wasn't as much ice available, and what ice they had had to be transported from locations further north, like Maine, increasing the price. Around the same time period, several inventors were working on creating ice artificially. In 1853, American inventor Alexander Twinning created the first system for refrigeration and creating artificial ice. In 1854, Australian inventor James Harrison had a system that was producing 6,000 kilograms of ice per day. In 1867,

Texan Andrew Moll created an ice-making machine for the beef industry in Texas. By the 1890s, artificially produced ice had taken over from ice harvesting. It was cheaper, the ice was cleaner, you had less lost through melting, and more importantly, it could be produced year-round. Even though artificial refrigeration became more popular, it was still mostly ice that was providing cooling. Refrigeration systems were very bulky and couldn't be pulled by a horse or easily powered by a railroad freight car. The ice infrastructure was still in place, it was just now produced differently. In the 20th century, the big development was the spread of residential ice creation. In the 1930s, only a small percentage of Americans had refrigerators, but by the 1950s, that

reached over 80%. If people wanted ice, they could make it at home by putting water into a tray and then putting that into their freezer. The first automatic home ice maker was released in 1953, and the first one to be built into a refrigerator door appeared in 1965. One of the unique features of American hotels is ice machines. I've stayed at hotels all over the world, and I've never seen ice machines except in the United States, and over here, they're ubiquitous. The tradition of putting ice machines in hotels came from Kemminton Wilson, who was the founder of the Holiday Inn hotel chain.

At the time, hotels charged customers for ice, and he wanted his hotel to avoid having so many fees. When he opened his first holiday in in 1952 in Memphis, Tennessee, it was the first hotel to offer free ice via an ice machine. Soon, other hotels followed suit to compete. Why are they only found in the United States? Well, because Americans really like ice. Culturally, we put more ice into drinks, often by default without even asking, than any other country. You can still find a very small industry surrounding natural ice harvesting. There are a few companies that will get ice that comes off glaciers, for example, for use in beverages. There are also some people that will cut ice from lakes and rivers for use in ice sculpting

or the creation of ice hotels or ice castles for winter festivals. When I went to Antarctica, the staff would often look for a large piece of crystal clear ice floating in the water and bring it aboard the ship for drinks in the bar in the evening. Today, ice isn't that big of a deal. You can find it all over the world, and most people can create ice in their own home. And it has come a long way from being a product that was only consumed by kings and The associate producers of Everything Everywhere Daily are Peter Bennett and Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please join the list of patrons over at patreon.com. And also remember, if you leave a review or send me a question, you too can have it read on the show.