Fiftieth Anniversary

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 968, 10 May 1930, Page 31

Fiftieth Anniversary

History of Refrigeration

rIS year Australia celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of successful refrigeration into the meat and dairy produce industry. New Zealand and South American countries also sent their first successful shipments of frozen meat through the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere about the same time.

Although refrigeration was not a, le w discovery, its inauguration and control on a commercial basis only followed a long period of research •vcliich culminated in the first successful shipments of frozen meat arour.d the year 1880. With refrigeration, the rapid development of the netv countries of the Southern Hemisphere ■was made possihle, and a new era In the sphere of food preservation and control was ushered in. The first people to dabble with | refrigeration were the Saracens of I Damascus and the: Persians Jn the era j ot Haroun A 1 Raschid. Saladin had ■ some means by which snow g from the heights of the Lebanon Moun- i tains were kept unmelted in Datnas- I cus and used to cool beverages. In Persia, snow and ice were used com' paratlveiy commonly for a similar purpose in the ninth century. As far back as the 17th century frigorifle mixtures tor producing low temperatures were in use in London and in Paris. Jn 1762, Fahrenheit, jn working out his thermometer scale, obtained what he conceived to be the absolute zero from a mixture of ire and salt. Ice had been made in India from time immemorial by the atmospheric evaporation at night of ■water in shallow trays, placed on an insulating layer of straw to cut off the earth heat. In the early days of the last century, h small ice-making machine was placed on the market, which accomplished its work by the use of ammonium nitrate dissolved in water. The first attempt at ice-making in Britain would appear to have been that of Dr. Cullen, in 1755, who used a vacuum machine. However, none of these ideas brought refrigerated Transportation to light. That was I reserved for Australia and New Zealand. Somewhere about, the middle of last century Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, the founder ot Mort’s Dock. Sydney, was reading his ''Sydney Morning Herald" and came across the report of the bursting ot % glacier in Northern Europe. This huge mass ot ice contained the body ot a mammoth, which was in a state of perfect preservation, skin, hair, everything, apparently as fresh as though it had been killed only a few days before. Mr. Mort sprang up, struck the table with his fist, and said:

“I have discovered how Australia’s abundance may supply Europe’s need.”

In 1861, Mr. Mort established freezing works at Darling Harbour, and laid the foundation of what afterward, the writer -believes, was known as "The Fresh Food and Ice Company.” James Harrison, of Geelong, Victoria, in 1873, sent a shipment of frozen meat to England, but it did not arrive in good condition. Mr. Mort, who had been experimenting feverishly since the establishment of his freezing works ill 1861, fitted up the sailing ship Nor.nam with an ammonia compression plant, which broke down while the ship was still in harbour. Then Mr. Coleman, of Glasgow, Scotland, invented a freezing machine which was used by butchers in London to preserve their meat dining the hot weather. Mr. Andrew Mellwraith heard of this machine and fitted up a ship, the steamer Strath leven to carry frozen meat. In due time she arrived in Sydney, and loaded up with beef and mutton, mostly the latter. This arrived in England in perfect condition, and realised 4Jd and s*d a lb, the original cost in Sydney being lJcTto 2d a lb. That was the beginning of the frozen meat trade, for just about the time these things were happening, a cargo of meat was shipped from Buenos Ayres by the steamer Paraguay to France, and arrived in perfect order and condition, and changed the history of South America. The first successful shipment was sent Home from the South Island of New Zealand also about that time. The establishment of the refrigerating industry in Sydney cost Mr. Mort over 4181,000, and whether it ever really paid him no one seems to know. He conducted exhaustive researches himself and by means of a trained staff, and he also financed a number of experimenters in England and France as well as in Australia. No one has done more for the social and commercial development of the Dominions. than those early experimenters in the sphere of refrigeration; to them New Zealand owes her growing export trade, and the greater part of her wealth today; refrigeration will allow for considerably greater development in.the future; in fact, one could say with considerable justification in this the 50th year of its inauguration as a dominating factor in the control of foodstuffs, that each year refrigeration is going to play a bigger and bigger part in commercial circles and that, with its help, New Zealand will continue to move toward greater and still greater prosperity.