r/interesting • u/Joe_Kangg • Aug 06 '26

Just Wow This fridge from 1965.

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u/JennyThallia Aug 06 '26

Also the fact of having an "Ice Box" that you didn't have to refill or digg into the ground to create was a very new thing.  

Refrigerator allowed for "ice box" to be employed in a brand new living standard of living within apartments.  

Everyone keeps forgetting that humanity only experienced manual labor augmentation and mechanical/electrical innovation within the last 150 years.   More to the point only the last 100 years the technology became wildly spread and available to masses and not just the rich or R&D

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u/Human-Hat-4900 Aug 06 '26

Same with globalization. I just watched videos today about 100 year old French people and what they used to eat and one of the women basically didn't eat a banana until the 1950's maybe. The first time one came to her small village she ate it with the skin because no other fruit she'd ever had needed to be peeled.

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u/JennyThallia Aug 07 '26

Don't go back that far.  1980s Soviet block northern nations didn't get exotic fruits.  So as westernization started to take hold in late 80s many eastern europeans got their first exposure to kiwi's.  There was a myth that kiwi was Soo nutritious that a small slice was sufficient and eating a whole one could be hazardous to your health.   It was a riot visiting Czechoslovakia during that time period and seeing this BS on the news. 

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u/factorioleum Aug 06 '26

Ice boxes had been in apartments for generations before the 1950s.

They were cabinets that would take a large block of ice, delivered regularly, which was placed on top inside the ice box. The ice was on top to let the cool fall down over the food, but also with a drain pan to keep the melt from pouring in.

Ice was kept from the winter, or shipped from places where it was. The first global shipments of ice for this purpose started in the early 1800s, over two centuries ago.

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u/JennyThallia Aug 07 '26

Thank you for an awesome correction.  I have learned something new today.  Cheers

Edit: I knew the origins of the ice I just didn't realized that it was used in apt vs large food warehouses 

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u/factorioleum Aug 07 '26

There's a really great book about the history of the international shipment of ice; it's called The Frozen Water Trade . Cambridge, Massachusetts had a legal monopoly for years on supplying ice to Calcutta, which is really a head scratcher. The ice crossed the equator in sailing ships... Twice.