G08: I&S Innovators: Refrigeration

Before mechanical refrigeration systems were introduced, ancient peoples cooled their food with ice transported from mountains.

One reason human beings can thrive in all kinds of climates is that they can control the qualities of the air in the enclosed spaces in which they live.

Albert Einstein patented a refrigerator in the 1930s that doesn't use greenhouse gases and can run without electricity. So what happened to it?

For a century, scientists had known that you could make it artificially colder by compressing some gases into liquids, then letting the liquid absorb heat as it evaporated again. But commercially successful applications remained elusive.

What is humanity’s greatest invention? Agriculture? Language? The Internet? Nope. It’s the refrigerator, at least according to Tom Jackson.