1803 |
First icebox patent issued |
1827 |
Ice cutter and new icehouse design made ice use less expensive with less melting |
1830s |
Natural ice shipped from New England to India and other parts of the world |
1860s-1900 |
Iceboxes, a.k.a. refrigerators, used blocks of ice in boxes to store food |
1880s |
Use of mechanical refrigeration to create artificial ice |
1900s-1920s |
Early electric refrigerators--from a separate motor to an integrated unit |
1920s-1950s |
Gas refrigerators manufactured, but did not catch on |
1920s-1930s |
Marketing push helped sell refrigerators, even during the Depression |
Early 1940s |
About half of families had a refrigerator |
1951 |
80% of families had refrigerators |
1980 |
Virtually 100% of families had refrigerators |