ice harvesting history

[128] Morse incorporated his few remaining rivals into the American Ice Company in 1899, giving him control of all of the natural and plant ice supplies and distribution in the north-east of the US. 125–126; Blain, pp. [108], Although the manufacture of artificial plant ice was still negligible in 1880, it began to grow in volume towards the end of the century as technological improvements finally allowed the production of plant ice at a competitive price. When this line was completed, they scribed the first cross line in the same manner. By Gene Purcell January 1995. In the Mediterranean and in South America, for example, there was a long history of collecting ice from the upper slopes of the Alps and the Andes during the summer months and traders transporting this down into the cities. The first and most profitable of these new routes was to India: in 1833 Tudor combined with the businessmen Samuel Austin and William Rogers to attempt to export ice to Calcutta using the brigantine ship the Tuscany. [198] His early ice houses in Cuba had inner and outer timber walls, insulated with peat and sawdust, with some form of a ventilation system, and these formed the basic design for ice houses during the rest of the century. Ice cream had been produced in small quantities since at least the 17th century, but this depended both on having large quantities of ice available, and substantial amounts of labour to manufacture it. 1830 [64] Ice began to be ordered instead from the then Russian-controlled Alaska in 1851 at $75 a ton (901 kg). Ice harvesting is the process of obtaining resources from ice fields (commonly called "ice belts"). [206] A typical Hudson River warehouse might be 400 feet (120 m) long, 100 feet (30 m) deep and three stories high, able to hold 50,000 tons (four million kg) of ice. [72] The resulting product was variously called plant or artificial ice, but there were numerous obstacles to manufacturing it commercially. Some of this was protective equipment to allow the workforce and horses to operate safely on ice, including cork shoes for the men and spiked horse shoes. Every winter, long after the last guests have departed, a ritual takes place at RDC-- the harvesting of lake ice.When the ice off the Deephaven shore becomes eleven or twelve inches thick (usually mid January to mid February) the work begins. [167] As the trade expanded, however, ice became valuable, and the right to cut ice became important. At least one New Hampshire campground still harvests ice to keep cabins cool during the summer. [83] Meanwhile, Norway entered the international ice trade, focusing on exports to England. [175] The uniform blocks that Wyeth's process produced also made it possible to pack more ice into the limited space of a ship's hold, and significantly reduced the losses from melting. Cummings, p. 48; Blain, p. 7; Weightman, pp. To meet the ever-increasing demand for ice, harvesting was done on ponds, rivers, bays and even canals (more about canal ice later). 27–28; Weightman, p. 184. In late January, visitors to the farm will learn about the tools and technology that made ice harvesting a successful business at the turn of the 20th century with demonstrations of ice cutting, hauling, and handling. [233] This improved ventilation was essential to avoid warm air building up in the car and causing damage to the goods. [153] Early in the 19th century only ad hoc, improvised tools such as pickaxes and chisels were used for the rest of the harvest, but in the 1840s Wyeth introduced various new designs to allow for a larger-scale, more commercial harvesting process. [229] By the 1830s portable refrigerator chests became used in the meat trade, taking advantage of the growing supplies of ice to use ventilation to better preserve the food. Over the coming years the trade widened to Cuba and Southern United States, with other merchants joining Tudor in harvesting and shipping ice from New England. [163] These included a horse-drawn ice cutter, resembling a plough with two parallel cutters to help in marking out the ice quickly and uniformly, and later a horse-drawn plough with teeth to assist in the cutting process itself, replacing the hand saw. [203] Later improvements to loading included the use of lift systems to raise the blocks of ice to the top of the building, first using horse power, then steam power; the largest warehouses later introduced conveyor belt systems to bring the ice into storage. Ice was used far and wide. [182] Initially a crude method of loading involving ice tongs and a whip was used to lower the separated blocks of ice into the hold, but an improved method was developed by the 1870s involving a levered platform, superseded by a counterweighted platform device by 1890. [81] Spurred on by the introduction of artificial ice plants around the world by the British Royal Navy, the International Ice Company was founded in Madras in 1874 and the Bengal Ice Company in 1878. “The importance of ice to meat packers of the West, to milk companies and to brewers as well as to market men everywhere made the ice business prominent among early industries in the United States.”  In 1830, businesses in Cincinnati were selling crushed ice by the basket. [74] For most of the 19th century, plant ice was not as clear as much natural ice, sometimes left white residue when it melted and was generally regarded as less suitable for human consumption than the natural product. [36] With the ice fetching for three pence (£0.80 in 2010 terms) per pound (0.45 kg), the first shipment aboard the Tuscany produced profits of $9,900 ($253,000), and in 1835 Tudor commenced regular exports to Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. Tudor wasn't the first to notice the value of ice, of course. [35] The Anglo-Indian elite, concerned about the effects of the summer heat, quickly agreed to exempt the imports from the usual East India Company regulations and trade tariffs, and the initial net shipment of around a hundred tons (90,000 kg) sold successfully. [70] By the 1860s, ice was being used to allow the brewing of the increasingly popular lager beer all year round. [194] Deliveries could occur either daily or twice daily. [136] Concerns also grew over the safety of natural ice. [97], Another ice famine in 1870 then impacted both Boston and the Hudson, with a further famine following in 1880; as a result entrepreneurs descended on the Kennebec River in Maine as an alternative source. [86] Distribution of the Norwegian ice across Britain was helped by the growing railway networks, while the railway connection built between the fishing port of Grimsby and London in 1853 created a demand for ice to allow the transport of fresh fish to the capital. [3] Similar trading practices had grown up in Mexico during the colonial period. [73] Ammonia-based approaches potentially left hazardous ammonia in the ice, into which it had leaked through the joints of machinery. [134] This was reflected in trade publications changing their names: the Ice Trade Journal, for example, retitled itself the Refrigerating World. [153] The blocks could finally be cut out of the ice and floated to the shore. The following article was written by Jean and Bud Seymour for the Sodus Bay Historical Society Newsletter: (Most of the information for this article came from Ice Harvesting in Early America by Dewey D. Hill and Elliott R. Hughes, published by and for the New Hartford Historical Society of New Hartford, New York in February 1977. [114] Tellier produced a chilled storeroom for the steamship Le Frigorifique, using it to ship beef from Argentina to France, while the Glasgow-based firm of Bells helped to sponsor a new, compressed-air chiller for ships using the Gorrie approach, called the Bell-Coleman design. [84] The ice harvesting was initially centred on the fjords of the west coast, but poor local transport links pushed the trade south and east to the main centres of the Norwegian timber and shipping industries, both essential for ice exporting. [99], By the 1860s, natural ice was increasingly being used to move western American products to the east, starting with chilled meat from Chicago. The History of Ice Harvesting Farmers in northern climates once took advantage of nearby springs and ponds for natural refrigeration to preserve food. 56, 66–67; Cummings, pp. In the New England states, the demand for ice toward the end of the 18th century began to increase. During the 1830s and 1840s the ice trade expanded further, with shipments reaching England, India, South America, China and Australia. Figures are rounded off to the same level precision as the original, and expressed in 2010 terms. [27] Instead, Tudor teamed up with Nathaniel Wyeth to take advantage of the ice supplies of Boston on an industrial scale. The first step in opening up the channel was clearing out the ice from between the piers. The ice created there was shipped all over the world, including exotic ports like China and Australia. [16] Some ships occasionally transported ice from New York and Philadelphia for sale to the southern U.S. states, in particular Charleston in South Carolina, laying it down as ballast on the trip. [192], The final part of the supply chain for domestic and smaller commercial customers involved the delivery of ice, typically using an ice wagon. River Ice Industry During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the harvesting, storage, and shipment of nat­ ural ice was one of the Hudson River's most important economic activities. Farmers used it to keep milk butter, eggs and perishable produce from spoiling; railroads used it to keep meat and milk from spoiling while being transported to market and to cool perishables served in their dining cars; hotels, restaurants and private homes used it in their iceboxes, ice cream makers and to cool beverages. [124] Austria entered the European ice market behind Norway, with the Vienna Ice Company exporting natural ice to Germany by the end of the century. By the time the icehouse was full, the harvest was surrounded by insulating material, sometimes as much as three feet of it. Historic Ice Harvesting in Woods Hole Tools for Harvesting the Ice Ice Saws. [113], Plant technology began to be turned to the problem of directly chilling rooms and containers, to replace the need to carry ice at all. [227] By the 1840s, improved supplies and an understanding of the importance of circulating air was making a significant improvement to refrigeration in the U.S.[230], With the development of the U.S. railroad system, natural ice became used to transport larger quantities of goods much longer distances through the invention of the refrigerator car. [20], The first shipments took place in 1806 when Tudor transported an initial trial cargo of ice, probably harvested from his family estate at Rockwood, to the Caribbean island of Martinique. Ice Harvesting. [84], Ice houses were also built in the major ice-consuming cities to hold the imported ice before final sale and consumption, where they were often termed depots. For this reason, a “choke rope” was part of a horse’s standard  equipment. One belonged to the Pennsylvania Railroad  and was located at the south end of Ontario Street, on the east side of the street. The driver and his assistants immediately pulled on the “choke rope”, shutting off the animal’s wind supply and thus preventing it from struggling in the icy water. New England in 1805. … [31] Wyeth created a new form of horse-pulled ice-cutter in 1825 that cut square blocks of ice more efficiently than previous methods. [71] Various methods had been invented to do this, including Jacob Perkins's diethyl ether vapor-compression refrigeration engine, invented in 1834; engines that used pre-compressed air; John Gorrie's air cycle engines; and ammonia-based approaches such as those championed by Ferdinand Carré and Charles Tellier. Indeed, ice exports from the US peaked around 1870, when 65,802 tons (59,288,000 kg), worth $267,702 ($4,610,000 in 2010 terms), were shipped out from the ports. Artificial ice was now able to keep food cold all year long and ice harvesting became a thing of the past by the 1930s. Temperatures are getting colder in Wisconsin, and that means the state's lakes will soon start freezing over (if they haven't already). 121–122; Dickason, p. 57; Smith, p. 44. At its peak at the end of the 19th century, the U.S. ice trade employed an estimated 90,000 people in an industry capitalised at $28 million ($660 million in 2010 terms),[a] using ice houses capable of storing up to 250,000 tons (220 million kg) each; Norway exported a million tons (910 million kg) of ice a year, drawing on a network of artificial lakes. The next step was to create floats and the process was begun as near the conveyor as possible. The last ice-storage houses in Mankato were removed and a modern plant was built. Chilled refrigerator cars and ships created a national industry in vegetables and fruit that could previously only have been consumed locally. The cakes could then be split off with a breaking bar and, if done correctly, would break evenly, leaving no lips on the cakes. In the U.S., ice was cut into 25-, 50- and 100-pound blocks (11, 23 and 45 kg) then distributed by horse-drawn ice wagons. [21] Learning from this experience, Tudor then built a functioning ice depot in Havana and, despite the U.S. trade embargo declared in 1807, was trading successfully again by 1810. [120] Lakes in Wisconsin began to be put into production to supply the Midwest. [29] It was also being used by tradesmen to preserve perishable goods, rather than for direct consumption. In London, the early ice depots were often circular and called wells or shades; the New Cattle Market depot built in 1871 was 42 feet (13 m) wide and 72 feet (22 m) deep, able to hold 3,000 short tons (three million kg) of ice. [57], With this growth in commerce, Tudor's initial monopoly on the trade broke down, but he continued to make significant profits from the growing trade. The trade was started by the New England businessman Frederic Tudor in 1806. lce was a crop and like any other crop, subject to the whims of weather. [166] Famous ice famines in the U.S. included those in 1880 and 1890, while the mild winter of 1898 in Norway resulted in Britain having to seek additional supplies from Finland. [79], The international ice trade continued through the second half of the 19th century, but it increasingly moved away from its former, New England roots. [132] Plant ice production in New York doubled between 1900 and 1910 and, by 1914, 26 million tons (23 billion kg) of plant ice was being produced in the U.S. each year in comparison to the 24 million tons (22 billion kg) of naturally harvested ice. [197], The understanding of thermodynamics was limited at the start of the 19th century, when it was believed that the key to the successful storage to ice was the construction of underground ice houses, where it was believed, incorrectly, that it would always be cool enough to store ice successfully. [152], The ice trade started with the harvesting of ice from ponds and rivers during the winter, to be stored for the summer months ahead. Houses belonging to large ice companies had capacities of 30,000 to 40,000 tons. This rang the death knell for the ice harvesting industry. [42], Other new markets were to follow. A good ice cutter would pull the saw almost out of the ice then lean far over to push the saw handles almost to the surface of the pond. [179] By the end of the 19th century, the preferred choice was a wooden-hulled vessel, to avoid rust corrosion from the melting ice, while windmill pumps were installed to remove the excess water from the hull using bilge pumps. ICE HARVESTING. [222] In 1843, however, a new ice cream maker was patented by Nancy Johnson which required far less physical effort and time; similar designs were also produced in England and France. 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