The Age Of Refrigeration

The 20th century has been called many things—the age of steam, of steel, of electricity, of aviation, and most recently of atomic energy. It also might be called the age of refrigeration—an entirely different kind of ice age than the world has ever before experienced. Ice. which is merely frozen water, possesses such vast possibilities that man only now is beginning to recognize and take advantage of them. Today, ice is an easily obtainable necessity that costs little. But this has not always been the case.

Time was when a pound of ice was so costly that only merchant prince’s and men of great wealth could afford to buy it. Farther back in history, cool drinks and iced foods were luxuries that only the mightiest of rulers could command. Ice is, at any time, both a preserver and a destroyer, is a vast storehouse of water, one of the world's greatest natural resources, yet, when it releases that store too rapidly, floods and disaster result. It is a preserver, too. and perishables locked in its crystal depths will last indefinitely. It is an architect and a builder, for it has shaped the face of the earth, rounding off corners or lopping off hilltops - and heaping up the material somewhere else. It is the handwriting of the ice age.

As a source of recreation, ice-skating, ice boating and associated winter sports provide entertainment and exercise for thousands. A frozen pond, sparkling, in the wintry daylight, is a thing of beauty, as are the great ice fields of the far North. But when loose at sea the great floating chunks of ice known, as icebergs are wreckers, as the long roll of lost ships indicates. Ice is used in modern surgery as a painkiller, yet it can cause pain, too, as anyone who has ever experienced the ache and tingle of frostbitten feet, ears or fingers can eloquently testify. In addition to this twentieth century ice age—this age of refrigeration—several other ice ages have come and gone.

Geologists say that the world is only now progressing out of the most recent of these older ice ages, and no one will predict whether other icy eras lie ahead. We have moved such a short distance from the last glacial age that a drop of nine degrees in the world's yearly average temperature would serve to bring on another. Many parts of the northern hemisphere owe their present physical state to the crushing, grinding and smoothing powers of the great ice sheets, which four, or possibly five times, crept over them. Each ice age is said to have lasted about fifty thousand years, with pleasant interglacial periods, perhaps several times as long, sandwiched in between.

The last ice age ended about twenty thousand years ago and since that time the climate has been growing milder, with occasional setbacks. Those great ice sheets retreated slowly, reluctantly, and are still retreating.

By: davidbunch

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