It’s hard to overestimate just how significant the invention of refrigeration is on the food supply chain, grocery shopping and our daily lives.
It wasn’t all that long ago that ice barons harvested the naturally formed frozen surface of lakes for highly lucrative distribution around the world, viewers learned in The Secret Genius of Modern Life: Fridge (BBC Two, 9 April, 8pm).
But all that changed when a Scot living in arid Australia patented a prototype of an ice-making machine, host Hannah Fry explained. Sure, he “blows himself up a couple of times, but it was worth it”. His invention was refined and improved, eventually resulting in the appliance now found in a billion homes worldwide.
Fry – who manages to deliver complex scientific concepts in a way that makes them seem like a saucy secret being shared – explained how fridges work, by essentially being “designed to cheat physics”.
She also covered the social impact, particularly the “profound effect” of affordable fridges on housewives. “All of a sudden that daily grind of shopping and cooking fresh had a release,” she said.
The ozone-damaging effects of CFC refrigerants was also covered in detail, as was the accidental discovery of modern foam insulation material.
Fry throughout relished the opportunity to take things apart – be that painstakingly or with a claw hammer – and conducted numerous countertop experiments that helped things make sense. The show – with the premise of taking a “seemingly ordinary item” and looking at it “in, frankly, obscene detail” – is a delight. Very cool.
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