What is the oldest model of refrigerator?

Answer 1

Not an easy question to answer. Here's what we know though:

• 1748 - William Cullen demonstrated a refrigerating machine at the University of Glasgow.
• 1805 - Oliver Evans (American) designed the first mechanical refrigerating machine.
• 1834 - Jack Perkins (American) builds the first practical refrigerating machine using compressed ether.
• 1844 - American, Dr. John Gorrie builds a refrigerator from Evans' design to make ice to help keep his yellow fever patients cool.
• 1876 - German engineer Carl von Linden patents a process for liquifying gas that becomes the basis of modern refrigeration.
• 1879 - Aftican-American inventor Thomas Elkins patents improvements in refrigeration design.
• 1891 - American inventor John Standard patents improvements in refrigeration design.
• 1913 - The first electric refrigerator is offered for sale.
• 1915 - Alfred Mellowes and Nathaniel Wales designs a newer model of the first unit and the Guardian Frigerator Company is incorporated to manufacture the model in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Only 40 units were ever built.
• 1918 - General Motors Corporation buys GFC and reorganizes the company to become Frigidaire. Engineers redesign the Mellowes/Wales model and remarket it as Frigidaire's first product, known only as the Frigidaire (shortened to "Fridge").
• 1930 - Thomas Midgley Jr. and Albert L. Henne working with a research team from General Motors Research Group and Frigidaire develop dichlorofluoromethane (Freon or R21), which becomes the primary coolant for refrigeration for approximately 60 years.

*Some sources credit the General Electric Company Monitor Top refrigerator as the first, but this unit was not not developed until the early 1920's and was not commercially available until 1927.