(upbeat music)
(ratchet clicking)
(switching turning)
(bell dinging)
- [Narrator] Behold the refrigerator,
but where did it come from?
Meet Jacob Perkins, born on July 6, 1766
in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Perkins always had a knack for invention.
By the age of 15, he'd already perfected
a method for creating
gold-plated show buckles.
Nine years later, he designed a machine
that cut nails and added
heads to each of them.
Perkins next improved the way bank notes
were engraved and moved to England in 1818
to supply local banks with copper plates.
It was after meeting
Oliver Evans that Perkins
next turned his genius to refrigeration.
Using refrigeration principles developed
by Benjamin Franklin and others, Evans had
already designed a
refrigerator device in 1805
but had never finished it.
Perkins modified Evans' design
and patented it in 1834.
Perkins' closed-cycle
vapor-compression refrigerator
was a prototype not
intended for domestic use
as it used dangerous substances like ether
and ammonia in its cooling process.
His design worked off the principles that
as fluids, these substances absorbed heat
and lowered the temperatures
of nearby objects.
By using a compressor to exert pressure
on the substances, Perkins' refrigerator
controlled when the
ether or ammonia changed
from a gas to a liquid.
As it moved through the
refrigerator's coils,
the substance absorbed heat
and vaporized once more
before returning to the
compressor for reuse.
Not long after filing
his refrigerator patent,
Perkins retired.
He died in 1849, before
his invention really
took off and became
the household appliance
that we all know and love.
(mysterious music)
