REFRIGERATOR IS NOT A MODERN INVENTION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 39, 16 September 1949, Page 3

REFRIGERATOR IS NOT A MODERN INVENTION

The big store refrigerator, so popular with Bay of Plenty food businesses for storing food during the summer months, is not a modern invention, although most people today think it is. Nature has had her own store refrigerators in the polar regions, where for millions of years she has preserved animals and other remains of prehistoric ages. Today modern, man is finding thcs.*; traces of an ancient life, which gives him a slight glance at the world as it has previously been. But moving further on in history. The Romans evolved a “deep-freez-ing” refrigerator system some 2,000 years ago. The remains of 'it have recently been excavated on a preChristian settlement in Carinthia by archaeologists. The system was built into a shaded rock wall, without windows, and with a special close-fitting door. The first cave is about 10 feet square with a clay floor and' soft whitewashed walls. A wooden staircase led into a deep rock celtlar about 15 feet broad and covered with a harder, waterproof whitewash.,, The floor was rock. Apparently every winter two or three .feet of snow was trampled down to provide extra coolness.' In here was the “ice box,” reserved for the costliest delicacies of the day—the oystei’s, snails, and other titbits of which Phutarch writes in “Table Problems." This was a well sunk in the rock floor, lined with larchwood and fitted with a strainer and a lid. “Contact refrigeration” was .provided by ice-cold spring water, which flowed immediately beneath.