Artificial Preservation of Food

The development of technology dedicated to arresting the natural spoilage of food.

While people had been fermenting and drying food since time immemorial, it was not until Scottish physician and agriculturist William Cullen proposed a device to refrigerate foods, there by slowing spoilage, that a man-made object alone worked against the laws of nature to preserve food. Refrigeration did not become a common method of food storage until almost  200 years after Cullen first first demonstrated it in 1756, but its development was a clear victory in the battle against microorganisms that rob food of its looks, nutritional content and edibility.

Cullen's first refrigeration system was made by using a pump to create a partial vacuum over a container of diethyl ether, which when boiled absorbed heat from the air around it. This, in turn created cool air and even produced ice. Perhaps because of the complicated nature of the system people did not see a practical use of refrigeration at first but efforts continued to create artificial cooling systems. Benjamin Franklin amount many other scientists persisted in conducting experiment to that end. At first, only large food producing operations such as slaughterhouses and breweries used refrigeration but then trucking companies began to install cooling systems in the vehicles that they used for transporting perishable items and by the 1920s refrigerators were available as consumer products.

Refrigeration makes possible the shipping of food to geographic locations where that food cannot be grown or processed, thereby expanding the potential variety and nutritional content of the populace's diet. Coupled with improved health care, a balanced diet allows for a better quality, longer lifespan and this would be difficult to accomplish without the refrigerator. In addition, refrigerators facilitate longer working hours, since food can be purchased or prepared ahead of time and reheated as needed.