Refrigerator : the story of cool in the kitchen / Helen Peavitt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Peavitt, Helen, author.

Contributor:

Science Museum (Great Britain)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Refrigerator industry--History.

Refrigerator industry.

Refrigerators--History.

Refrigerators.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (224 pages) : illustrations (some color)

Place of Publication:

London, [England] : Reaktion Books, 2017.

Summary:

From a late-night snack to a cold beer, there's nothing that whets the appetite quite like the suctioning sound of a refrigerator being opened. In the early 1930s fewer than ten percent of US households had a mechanical refrigerator, but today they are nearly universal, the primary means by which we keep our food and drink fresh. Yet, for as ubiquitous as refrigerators are, most of us take them for granted, letting them blend into the background of our kitchens, basements, garages, and all the other places where they seem so perfectly convenient. In this book, Helen Peavitt amplifies the hum of the refrigerator in technological history, showing us just how it became such an essential appliance.             Peavitt takes us to the early closets, cabinets, and boxes into which we first started packing ice and the various things we were trying to keep cool. From there she charts the development of mechanical and chemical technologies that have led to modern-day refrigeration on both industrial and domestic scales, showing how these technologies have created a completely new method of preserving and transporting perishable goods, having a profound impact on society from the nineteenth century and on. She explores the ways the marketing of refrigerators have expressed and influenced our notions of domestic life, and she looks at how refrigeration has altered the agriculture and food industries as well as our own appetites.             Strikingly illustrated, this book offers an informative and entertaining history of an object that has radically changed-in a little over one hundred years-one of the most important things we do: eat.   

Contents:

Cover

Refrigerator: The Story of Cool in the Kitchen

Imprint Page

Contents

Introduction

1. The Iceman Cometh

2. The Birth of Cool

3. Domesticating Cold

4. Refrigerator Dreams

5. Anatomy of the Refrigerator

6. A Culinary Revolution

7. 'Is there Health in your Refrigerator?'

8. Refrigerated World

References

Select Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Photo Acknowledgements

Index.

Notes:

"Published in association with the Science Museum, London"

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed September 16, 2017).

ISBN:

9781780237978

1780237979