Scolopendra

1929 Crosley IcyBall absorption refrigerator, a unique, non-electric appliance with no moving parts. It uses a sealed, batch-operated system containing an ammonia and water mixture.... The hot ball (on the right with the fins/ribs) is placed over a stove or heat source for about 90 minutes. This drives the ammonia gas out of the water solution and condenses it as a liquid into the cold ball (on the left with the hollow/cradle). After charging, the cold ball is placed inside the insulated refrigerator box. As the liquid ammonia slowly evaporates back toward the water-containing hot ball, it absorbs heat from the interior of the fridge, providing 24 or more hours of cooling per charge. . . . . In the late 1920s, millions of American farm families still had no electricity. For them, keeping food cold meant buying ice blocks or living without. The IcyBall offered another way. It was invented by David Forbes Keith of Toronto and sold by the Crosley Radio Corporation starting in 1929. It worked using ammonia and water sealed inside two metal balls connected by a pipe. Each morning, you heated the “hot ball” over a kerosene stove for about an hour and a half. The heat drove the ammonia over into the other ball. A whistle sounded when it was fully charged. Then you placed the cold ball inside an insulated cabinet. As the ammonia slowly evaporated and flowed back, it pulled heat out of the box, keeping food cold for roughly a day. It used no electricity, no motor and only about a cup of kerosene. As power lines reached rural America in the 1930s, electric refrigerators took over, and the IcyBall faded away. The idea never fully died. In 2016, a British design student won the James Dyson Award for a small vaccine cooler based on the IcyBall, designed for places without reliable electricity. #archaeohistories