How did fridges work without electricity?

Question

In science we where asked how did fridges work in the olden days without electricity any infomation would be appreciated

Answer 1

Well, if you really stop and think about it, where do you suppose the word Ice Box came from? Before refrigerators were invented, some people had an ice-box. The ice-man delivered big squares of ice which kept food cold.

Answer 2

ahaaa, many of you never saw it...

but before electricity was available everywhere (yes, it is not that far away when electricity was not available everywhere, there are farmlands today without electricity... think about it), the refrigerator used mechanical pumps (to pump the freon gas) driven by a kerosene or gasoline small engine.  There were never a "gas" engine driven a refrigerator.  Gas engines are quite new, mostly natural gas, propane or methane gas.

Please people, lets learn the appropriated way to refer to the fuel that burn inside your car's engine, the name is GASOLINE, not gas.  Gas means a form of the matter, remember?  solid, liquid or gas... ?    Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen are gases, GASOLINE is a liquid fuel.

wagner.

Yes folks, refrigerators are much older than distributed electricity.

Answer 3

There are gas burning fridges.  Some how the heat from the fire gets the refridgerant circulating and makes them get cold.

Answer 4

They were iceboxes, not fridges. The iceman delivered a big chunk of ice every day or two. You kept it covered up and broke off chunks and put them in the icebox.

The ice came from groups that cut up ice from frozen lakes in the winter and stored it under lots of sawdust for the summer.

Answer 5

In China,thousand years ago,people knew how to keep ice to use in hot summer time. They dig deep hole in the ground before the cold winter. They stored a lot ice in the deep hole. Ice stored in the deep earth hole shall not melt down completely. They store food inside the cold icy storage room or even took some ice out to enjoy in the hot summer.

Answer 6

There is a type of refrigerator that uses gas to power it. It has no moving parts and is therefore silent in operation. It is called an absorption refrigerator. Oddly it uses heat to operate. Gas in this context refers to mains gas, not gasoline.

The following link explains how it works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_...

I know that these did exist because my Aunt used to have one in the 1960's