THE ICE CUBE TRAY Although it is not known for sure who invented the first ice cube tray many historians credit Gorrie Documents show Gorrie used his refrigeration machine to freeze ice and provided iced drinks to his patients By the 1920s ice cube trays often came standard with refrigerators The basic design remained the same but inventors experimented with different materials in search of a tray that would provide the flexibility needed to allow users to twist the tray and pop out the ice The first patents were for a rubber tray By 1933 stainless steel trays were popular By the 1950s and 1960s the plastic tray emerged and is common today Gorrie a local physician tumed inventor had not created his ice maker to cool drinks for the wealthy Rather he wanted it to prevent yellow fever which had hit Apalachicola in 1841 Doctors had not yet discovered that yellow fever and malaria as well as other tropical diseases were spread by mosquitoes They believed warm air caused the diseases Gorrie noticed the fevers caused by these maladies stopped in cold weather To contain the spread of the disease and ease the suffering of patients Gorrie suspended a bucket of ice from the infirmary's ceiling Because cool air is heavier than warm air it drops lower than warm air pushing the warm air above it As a result placing the bucket near the ceiling helped to cool the room Some researchers say Gorrie added a fan to speed up the cooling process but no one is sure how he would have been able to add a fan Ice was essential to this early air conditioning system But finding ice was no easy feat Most of the ice available in the southern United States People in southern states relied on the work of ice harvesters in colder
came from New York and New England where workers harvested it in the winter from frozen rivers and ponds In winter ice was expensive In summer it was often completely unavailable When Gorrie heard about other scientists experiments with mechanical ice systems he quit his job as a physician and threw himself into creating an ice making machine In an 1844 article in Apalachicola's Commercial Advertiser newspaper Gorrie described how his invention would work If the air were highly compressed it would heat up by the energy of compression If this compressed air were run through metal pipes cooled with water and if this air cooled to the water temperature was expanded down to atmospheric pressure again very low temperatures could be obtained even low enough to freeze water in pans in a refrigerator box Gorrie recognized that his invention would be far easier to sell if it appealed to an audience beyond patients suffering from malaria and their doctors He wrote about the benefits of artificial ice promoting its commercial and humanitarian benefits Gorrie found a wealthy investor to sponsor his project and enlisted the Cincinnati Iron Works to build a model of this first commercially available refrigeration machine A replica of John Gorrie's ice machine is on display in the Garrie Museum in Apalachicola Florida 10
