Above photo: Siegel, Arthur S. (1941, July). Buying a refrigerator at the Crowley-Milner department store, Detroit, MI. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Photo Collection, Library of Congress.  Retrieved July 5, 2017 from http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/owi2001018567/PP/​

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