The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 59, July 1955 - April, 1956 Page: 178
587 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
188o, ranking 18/15, was one in which Texans may take the pride
of invention. A machine for making artificial ice by an absorp-
tion process had been patented by Ferdinand Carr6 of France
in i 86o. Several of his machines were slipped through the blockade
for emergency service at Confederate hospitals, but they were not
commercially practical. The requisite improvements in the Carrd
system were made by Daniel Livingston Holden, in San Antonio
in 1866. Subsequently, Holden acquired patent-rights to another
ice-making process, Vander Weyde's compression system, and im-
proved it; still later, in 1871, he made the first installation for
mechanical refrigeration in a slaughter-house, at Fulton (Aransas
County). Working with him in San Antonio was Andrew Muhl,
who developed an ether compression ice-machine by 1871. Dur-
ing 1873-1874, in Jefferson (Marion County), another inventor,
David Boyle, built the first commercially successful ammonia com-
pression ice-machine, a type which soon rivaled Holden's in pop-
ularity. In Dallas and Denison, meanwhile, Thomas L. Rankin
applied his versatile genius to the problems of refrigerating brew-
eries, storage houses, abattoirs, and box-cars. By 188o, the cost to
the consumer of artificial ice had been reduced to about two and
a half cents per pound, and Texas led the nation in production,
with a third of the total. (In easy second place was Louisiana,
which shared pioneering honors-and inventors-with its neighbor
to the west.) The largest single ice-plant in Texas in 188o was at
Dallas, but San Antonio, Houston, and Austin, with two factories
each, manufactured as much ice.5s
Only prototypes of these ice-making machines and refrigerated
cars were made in the state-such items were not among the ninety
or more products of Texas factories in 188o. The list did include
fireproof safes, hand-pumps, cutlery and edge tools, stencils and
brands, handstamps, umbrellas, paper boxes and bags, cosmetics,
drugs, baking and yeast powders, flavoring extracts, pickles, pre-
saU. S. Census, x88o, II, 56, 189-190, 369-371; ibid., XXII, "Report on the Ice
Industry of the United States," 35; United States Patents No. o0,201, issued to
Ferdinand Philip Edward Carr6, of Paris, France, October 23, 186o, No. 95,345,
issued to D. Livingston Holden, of New Orleans, Louisiana, September 28, 1869,
and No. 128,448, issued to David Boyle, of San Francisco, California, June 25, 1872
(copies in possession of W. R. Woolrich, Austin, Texas); Denison Daily News, July
22, December 6, December 17, 1873; Woolrich, "Mechanical Refrigeration," Refriger-
ating Engineering, 1, 5-8, lo; Woolrich, One Hundred Years of Mechanical Refriger-
ation, 4-1o, 12, 25-26. See also 35n.178
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 59, July 1955 - April, 1956, periodical, 1956; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101162/m1/196/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.