An 1803 patent for a refrigerator (ice box) was granted to Thomas Moore and signed by President Thomas Jefferson , invited to the Moore home in Montgomery County , Md to see the new Refrigeratory. A year later , in 1804 , Jefferson paid “Isaac Briggs [Moore's brother in law] for Thos. Moore 13.D for a refrigerator.” ... Moore described in great detail his new invention in his work , An Essay on the Most Eligible Construction of Ice-Houses. Also , A Description of the Newly Invented Machine Called the Refrigerator. Thomas Moore. Baltimore: 1803
The term refrigeratory or refrigerator had been used by brewers and distillers as “…part of an Alembick , or Distilng-Vessel , which is plac'd about the Head of the Still , and fill’d with Water to cool it , that the spirituous Vapours may the more easily thicken into Drops , and descend thro' the Neck of the Vessel.” [The New World of Words. Edward Phillips. 1720] The refrigerator is within the bucket on the left side [E] as part of the coils [The Repertory of Arts , Manufactures , and Agriculture , 1897] Although Moore called his ice box a 'refrigeratory ,' the following year , 1803 , when he patented it , he used "Refrigerators (this being the most appropriate term I have thought of for the machines intended to be here described)."
A cooper made a cedar oval tub and lid. The rectangular tin box , as seen in the sketch above , allowed space for ice between it and the wood. Both were covered with cloth and rabbit skin. He gave detailed information on the properties of the tin , wood , air space , cloth and skin to the cooling process.
As a farmer who lived near Sandy Spring , Md. [his home , Longwood] he sent butter and other produce twenty miles south to Georgetown or Washington , D.C. markets at night. By using his new box , the night travel was not necessary. The butter stayed firm and sold for 4d to 5 1/2d per pound higher than other's butter , thus paying for the box after four trips.
Moore's trial tin box was 14 x 6 and 12 inches deep , holding 22 one pound bricks of butter each wrapped in "linen cloths as usual." The tin became cold enough that the first layer of butter bricks "became so hard in a few minutes , that the remainder might be built upon it without injuring the shape."
Although his first purpose was to keep the butter hard for market , he wrote that housewives could use one in the cellar for provisions or in the dining room for "liquids"; butchers could store their meat , rather than use salt; and "fresh fish may be brought from any part of the Chesapeake bay , in the hottest weather and delivered at Baltimore market in as good condition as in the winter season." The cost to make his trial size box he calculated at $4. For smaller boxes and for persons "in low circumstances" they could have a permit for free. For various other sizes and uses , the permit fees to make a refrigerator from his plans ranged from "2 dolls. 50 cts to 10 doll."
Years after the patent , Thomas Moore and his invention were remembered by a man in Boston writing to a magazine. "Our butter is brought to market [Boston] in a sad state in summer , and it makes me blush when I reflect , that for more than thirty years the Philadelphia market has been supplied with it [butter] packed in ice , and since Mr. Moore's publication , in Refrigerators. I. P. Davis , Esq. imported one from Philadelphia , some years since , with the hope that it might be adopted here." [The American Farmer. Feb 6 , 1829. Baltimore]
Thomas Moore , a Quaker , joined the large Quaker community in the Brookeville/Sandy Spring area by marrying a cousin of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea. The first Maryland cookbook author [
Domestic Cookery. Baltimore: 1845 , 1846 , 1851 editions , with reprints into the 1880s] and her cousins inherited land from their Brooke ancester.
For information on the multitalented farmer and inventor , and for pictures of Thomas Moore and his home , Longwood go to the Sandy Spring Museumwebsite. ©2012 Patricia Bixler Reber
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