解放军文职招聘考试The Origin of Refrigerators

 The Origin of Refrigerators

By the mid-nineteenth century, the term"icebox"had entered the American

language, but ice was still only     beginning to affect the diet of ordinary

citizens in the United States. The ice trade grew with the growth of

cities. Ice was used  in hotels, taverns,  and hospitals, and  by some

forward-looking   city  dealers  in  fresh   meat,     fresh  fish,  and  

butter.   After  the  Civil   War

(1861-1865), as ice was used to refrigerate freight cars, it also came       into

household use. Even before 1880, half the ice sold in New York,

Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and one-third of  that sold in Boston and

Chicago, went to families for their own use. This had become possible

because a new   household convenience,  the icebox,  a precursor of  the

modern refrigerator, had  been invented.

Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as we might now suppose. In the

early nineteenth century, the knowledge  of the physics of heat, which was

essential to a science of refrigeration, was rudimentary. The commonsense

notion   that the best icebox was one that prevented the ice from melting was

of course mistaken, for it was the melting of   the ice that performed the

cooling. Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included wrapping the

ice in     blankets, which kept

the ice from doing its job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth

century did inventors      achieve the delicate balance of insulation and

circulation needed for an efficient icebox.

But as early as 1803, an ingenious Maryland farmer, Thomas Moore, had been

on the right track. He owned a farm   about twenty miles outside the city of

Washington, for which the village of Georgetown was the market center. When 

he used an icebox of his own design to transport his butter to market, he

found that customers would pass up the  rapidly melting stuff in the tubs of

his competitors to pay a premium price for his butter, still fresh and hard

in neat, one-pound bricks. One advantage of his icebox, more explained, was

that farmers would no longer have to travel to market at night in order to

keep their produce cool.

冰箱的由来

直到 19 世纪中期，"冰箱"这个名词才进入了美国语言，但冰仅仅只是开始影响美国普 通市民的饮食。  冰的买卖随着城市的发展而发展。 

冰被用在旅馆、酒馆、医院以及被一些 有眼光的城市商人用于肉、鱼和黄油的保鲜。  内战(1861-1865)之后，冰被用于冷藏货车， 同时也进入了民用。

 甚至在 1880 年前，半数在纽约、费城和巴尔的摩销售的冰，三分之一

在波士顿和芝加哥销售的冰进入家庭使用，因为一种新的家庭设备，冰箱，即现代冰箱的前 身，被发明了。  制造一台有效率的冰箱不像我们想象的那么简单。 

19  世纪早期，关于对 冷藏科学至关重要的热物理知识是很浅陋的。  认为最好的冰箱应该防止冰的融化这样一个

普遍的观点显然是错误的，因为正是冰的融化起了制冷作用。  早期为节省冰的努力，包括 用毯子把冰包起来，使得冰不能发挥它的作用。 直到近 19

世纪末，发明家们才成功地找到 有效率的冰箱所需要的精确的隔热和循环的精确平衡。 但早在 1803 年，一位有发明天才的

马里兰农场主，托马斯·莫尔，找到了正确方法。  他拥有一个农场，离华盛顿约 20 英里， 那里的乔治镇村庄是集市中心。 

当他用自己设计的冰箱运送黄油去市场时，他发现顾客们 会走过装在竞争者桶里那些迅速融化的黄油而给他比市价更高的价格买他仍然新鲜坚硬，整

齐地切成一磅一块的黄油。  莫尔说他的冰箱的一个好处是使得农民们不必在夜里上路去市 场以保持他们产品的低温。