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CORKBOARD INSULATED REFRIGERATOR 335
It has been seen how, in ancient times, trenches were dug
and filled with snow to cool kegs of wine. At a later time,
pits were dug, filled with ice and roofed over, which was
probably the earliest form of ice storage or ice house. About
the middle of the 16th century the rich in America harvested
and stored ice in private ice houses built of logs and padded
inside between the logs and the pile of ice with straw packed
tight, and later with sawdust. The blocks of ice were then
used in a heavy, wooden chest, about three feet wide by three
feet high and possibly ten or twelve feet long, resting on the
floor, usually in an out-building adjacent to the kitchen, in
which chest earthen containers were used in very much the
FIG. 155.—FOREFATHER OF THE MODERN HOUSEHOLD REFRIGERATOR
—A HEAVY CHEST CONTAINING RECEPTACLES FOR FOOD SUR-
ROUNDED ]}Y NATURAL ICE AND WATER.
same way as they were in the earlier crude box anchored
the stream or spring. This heavy, water-tight, wooden
chest, filled with ice and with vessels for liquids and pro-
ii visions to be cooled and preserved, having as a drain for the
water of meltage merely a hole in the end of the chest about
half way up, and equipped with a heavy, hinged lid, was the
: predecessor of the household ice-box and the crude forefather
of the modern household refrigerator.
152.—The Household Ice-box.—It has been seen that hol-
low walls, or air spaces, were the very first artificial barriers
' used in cold stores to retard the influx of heat, which method
of insulating cold temperatures from the higher temperatures