How people kept stuff cold before refrigerators

[kartyy]

Adam's becoming more of a social studies teacher than before and I'm loving it

[themachinevv]

I never tought that a video about refrigeration could be so heart warming

[retropulpmonkey]

Why Grandpa Ragusea iced his freezer instead of freezing his ice.

[Chsoxrk]

I'm a modern ice man! It comes in bags of chunks now rather than blocks and we use refrigerated trucks rather than horse drawn carriages with sawdust but we're still around! It's cool to see a video from a guy that has a connection to the early days of the industry that I'm a part of.

[pinkywinky]

I remember seeing small ice houses in the Philippines which sold huge block ice and I always wondered how the heck do they not melt. Instead of sawdust they used rice husk for insulation. Way more easier to clean off than sawdust and the ice was safe enough to put in food and drinks too. This video woke up some memories of me and my grandpa buying block ice to use in our coolers when we go to a picnic or waterpark. We had cold drinks all day long even in the hot and humid temperatures of the Philippines. 😄

[DennisNowland]

At 66 years of age I'm not exactly an Internet groupie, but I must say I really do enjoy your channel.

[Throrface]

As a player of Dungons&Dragons, I greatly appreciate this little dive into refrigeration for world building purposes. I can't wait to see the faces of my players when they are offered a box of ice as compensation for completing a quest.

[reverie_sm]

Now I understand why Adam Ragusea is so cool. It's in his blood.

[prsearls]

As a child in a small Midwest town, I remember ice deliveries to home iceboxes in the 1940's. We had an electric refrigerator but some of our neighbors did not. Small ice houses were also located at gas stations where you could get a block of ice (to make homemade ice cream). Some of the pop machines used a block of ice in water to keep the pop cold.

[sock]

My grandma once mentioned how glad she was when electric fridges first started being sold and she didn't' have to deal with the constant cleaning and draining of an ice box anymore. She said the first thing she thought of when she smelled mildew was still an ice box.

She seemed amazed that she ever put up with it.

[fclp]

"My italian-american father was an Iceman." was a line I only thought I'd hear in a mafia documentary

[kevinbyrne]

My dad grew up in Queens, New York City. He told me about the ice man who brought ice to his parents' apartment. There was an ice box in the kitchen, and under the ice box was a pan that collected the melt water. The ice was hauled by a horse-drawn cart. In summer, the kids would beg the ice man for chips of ice.

[michaelcohen]

I grew up on the Lower East Side in Manhattan in the 1950"s. There were still Icemen who regularly made deliveries to tenements. We would follow the truck around and steal large chips of clear ice from the back of the truck when the Iceman delivered the blocks.

[drummer]

I’m old enough to remember iceboxes even in my hometown Los Angeles and seeing the iceman using specialized tongs to grab a block of ice from his truck, sling it over his back and carry it into various homes on our street to refill iceboxes. There were even ice machines around town where you could drop a coin and a block of ice would come sliding out, which you could take home to refill your icebox or break into pieces to cool your drinks. Everyone owned an ice pick in those days!😄

[wireworks]

I was a kid back in the 50s living in Little Italy in Baltimore. I remember people were still buying ice from Sergis Ice Co. for their iceboxes. He'd deliver it on a horse and cart. So it wasn't that long ago that people still did things the old way. Great video

[ronwest]

It would've been nice to point out that the "industrial ice machines" used ammonia as a refrigerant instead of the freon that is used today, simply because of the stringent odor it produced and its inherent danger. I remember as a teen in Houston, going down to the local ice plant and seeing giant "ice trays" that would rotate based on a timed process for freezing the water (exactly like in the home refrigerator/freezer, but on a larger scale) and the ammonia refrigerant smell was so strong that I could not stay in there long. Also, the huge blocks would be delivered to local family owned stores, where on a Sunday morning the SOUND of the "ice chipper" grinding up the blocks into oddly shaped chips to fill "double waxed paper" 10 lb. bags would wake the dead, as they got ready to supply the locals with ice to carry to Sunday outings at the nearby beaches and parks.

[roseberry-njux]

Adam should do a video on why cheese doesn’t re-form after it melts if he hasn’t already. Edit: I’m fairly aware of how it works, but let’s be real we'd listen to Adam explain why we wear clothes in public at the drop of a hat

[mackieangat]

Dang the connection of Adam's family to the fridge history is so fascinating

[MrBcuzbcuz]

I’m old enough to remember the ice wagon coming every week. (It was a horse drawn carriage, but so was the milk wagon that came every day and the milkman put milk bottles on our doorstep) The good old days.
We had an ice box in our kitchen. The ice man would cut a block, wrap it in potato sacking, pick it up with an ice pincher, and carry it into our house. The ice fit on top of the icebox, in a lidded, insulated box with air slots on the bottom, that allowed the cold air to circulate through the icebox. As it melted the water would drip into a small tray at the bottom. (My job, as a small boy, was to empty the tray every day.)
Our icebox was only used to store milk, butter and a few fresh goods. Vegetables were stored in pantry room with air vents.
The tool all kids weren’t allowed to play with, but every kid wanted to use was the ice pick.
Cold drink, anyone?

[Kinkle_Z]

When I lived in Saratoga Springs, NY in the early 70s, I was AMAZED that ice and snow which had accumulated all winter was still there in late May and early June.