Houston Chapter CRC History Display

Houston Chapter CRC History
Display
1865 to 1892
Refrigeration Pioneers In South Texas
GrandMa Rosie Ice Box 1890’s Eagle
Lake, Tx
Top Compartment Holds 25# Block Ice
2.5 Cu. Ft. Food Compartment w/
Drain Tube to Drip Pan Below Icebox
17.6”W X 19.4”H X 12.5
Some thoughts!
– How long would a 25 # block of ice last?
– What FDB temperature could be achieved?
– When the ice block is completely melted; how long
does the cold last?
– Think about it, what a complicated calculation?
– Yet an empirical experiment with a multi channel data
logger would easily answer the questions!
– The drip pan under the unit 4” high holds 0.4 to 0.50
Cu Ft of water; 25# Block is 3.00 Cu Ft of water; pan
would have to be emptied between 8 and 10 times.
San Antonio River Walk at North
Pressa Street
San Antonio River Walk Downtown
Barton Springs Austin, Tx
San Jacinto Street @ Colorado River
Austin, Tx Near CRC Hotel
Waco, Texas Citizens Railroad Power
House
Daniel Holden Carre’ Ice Machine 1865
San Antonio
Muhl Ice House Between Franklin & Mary
on West Bank of Brazos River Waco, Tx.
Brunet & Muhl Brass & Iron Works @
Pressa on the River Bank
Do you know this Man?
• Being Proposed as a Refrigeration Pioneer of
ASHRAE 2014 by Houston Chapter!
• Received Patent for Ether Vapor Compression Ice
Machine!
• Received Patents for Improvement to existing Ice
Making Machine!
• Received Patent for Existing Cooling Building
Improvement, i.e., horizontal cooling coil and
forced air at ceiling for improved temperature
distribution! (More of a Refrigeration Room than
A/C System for a Building but Similar)!
Houston Chapter History Update
• Andrew Muhl, born 1831 in France in Alcase
Region.
• Educated in Paris as a locksmith and
machinist, served in French Army,
contemporary of Carre!
• Making and selling Ice and Ice Cream in France
prior to his departure to America.
• Immigrated to America in 1864, hurricane
deposited him in New Orleans,
Enclosed Water Containers/Ice Bins
Muhl’s Ether Ice Machine
Muhl Ice Machine @ North Pressa San
Antonio River
• According to an article in the Scientific
American August 17, 1872 Andrew Muhl’s ice
machine had been operating successfully in
San Antonio since 1867.
• The City of San Antonio Tore down the Dam
that was providing rotating shaft power for
Brunet & Muhl’s Water Mill Wheel
Andrew Muhl Pioneer of ASHRAE
Muhl Engaged by Guenther to build
Two Ice Machines
City AHJ Torn Down Dam
Ice Machine Vacuum Pump for Ether
to Boil Below Freezing Point of Water
River Water Condenses Ether Vapor
&Vacuum Pump Lowers BP of Ether
Horizontal Refrigeration Room Coils
with Blower (A/C)
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Early Improvement to Refrigeration
Room (A/C) by adding Blower and
Horizontal coils
San Antonio Tore down Dam for
Brunet & Muhl’s Water Mill Wheel
Brass & Iron Shop had to Turn a Profit
Paggi & Muhl Move Ice Machine to
Austin Barton Springs Area
• Messer. Paggi lived for a time in San Antonio where he
became interested in ice manufacturing. He met and
entered into contracts with Andrew Muhl of San
Antonio to relocate one of Muhl’s’ Ether Ice machines
from San Antonio to Austin. The 1870 census indicates
that he was living in Austin’s Barton Creek area. In 1871
he leased a turbine water wheel, a mill, several houses,
an ice machine and a grist mill on Barton about a
quarter of a mile below Barton Springs. Later that year
he went to Europe to purchase an ice machine that
could produce 2.5 tons a day of ice. By 1872 he was
superintendent of the Austin ice Company at San
Jacinto Street on the Colorado River.
Muhl was Encouraged to Move his
Base of Operations to Waco, Texas
Dr. Kingsbury in Victoria & Jefferson in
Jefferson, Tx
•
•
April 2, 1868 San Antonio Herald notes: ” We had a call from Dr. W. G.
Kingsbury, of this city, but who for the last several months has been busily
engaged in Victoria, Texas in Superintending the erection of the New Beef
Packing Establishment at that place. The doctor appears to be very
sanguine that his enterprise will be successful. His Ice machine, steam
engine and all fixtures are now on the ground and mechanics are busily
engaged in putting up the necessary buildings for the works. The
expectation is that he will be able to put up fifty beeves per day, and
hence it may be inferred that the establishment is to be on a large and
liberal scale. He expects to do most of his packing in the summer and fall
and to get into full operation in the next 2 or 3 months. We wish the
enterprise the most unbounded success.”
David Jefferson built and operated the first commercial successful
ammonia mechanical refrigeration plant at Jefferson, Texas in 1873 while
working without knowledge of Linde’s work in Germany. He outdistanced
the German inventor by at least a year.
Dr. Henry Peyton Howard and Thomas
Rankine in Start-ups
• Dr. Henry Peyton Howard, pioneer built of an ox-cart ice
and produce delivery system from Indianola to San
Antonio. Remember Gma Rosie”s Ice Box in Eagle Lake,
Texas.
• Howard later successfully delivered Texas beef to New
Orleans in the refrigerated steamship AGNES. His
unsuccessful competitor, Thaddeus S.C. Loew, failed in his
meat delivery because of poor ship design; however he did
successfully operate carbon dioxide compressor plants at
Dallas, Texas and Jackson, Mississippi in 1870. Thomas J.
Rankin built the first refrigerated meat cars to take Texas
beef to New York in 1872. The shipments were a success
but the refrigerated railroad car manufacturing folded and
was superseded by Kigan of Indianapolis, Indiana.
Holden, Fulton & Rankine Worked on
Refrigerated Rail Cars
•
Between 1871 and 1881 the first mechanically refrigerated abattoir in the
United States was planned, established, and successfully operated in
Fulton, Texas, for the purpose of chilling and curing beef for shipment to
Liverpool, England, and other destinations. Daniel Livingston Holden, his
brother Elbridge, and Elbridge Holden's father-in-law, George W. Fulton,
took part in the development of this new process of beef packing and
shipping. Thomas L. Rankin, of Dallas and Denison, held many patents in
the area of refrigeration and had been involved in refrigeration work with
Daniel Holden. From 1870 to 1877 Rankin worked on the development of
refrigerator and abattoir service for rail shipping of refrigerated beef from
Texas and the Great Plains. In late 1873 the Texas and Atlantic
Refrigeration Company of Denison made the first successful rail shipment
of chilled beef across the country from Texas to New York. The
development made by Rankin and his Texas associates spread rapidly to
other beef-shipping centers of the nation.
Professor Thaddeus S.C. Lowe
CO2 War Balloons & Refrigeration
• Professor Thaddeus S.C. Lowe of Civil War fame for using CO2
observation balloons to direct artillery fire was encouraged and
financed by the Texas Beef Industry. The development of
mechanical refrigeration for the Texas meat industry began in the
1860’s in Dallas, Texas with Thaddeus S. C. Lowe’s carbon dioxide
machines, which had been in previous military use to inflate
observation balloons during the Civil War. Using dry ice made with
carbon dioxide compressors, Lowe designed a refrigerated ship, the
William Tabor, in 1868, In competition with Howard Peyton of San
Antonio to carry chilled and frozen beef to New Orleans. Howard’s
steam ship Agnes was fitted with a cold-storage room twenty-five
by fifty feet in size. Because the William Tabor drew too much
water to dock in the New Orleans harbor, Howard’s steam ship
Agnes was the first to ship beef successfully by refrigerated boat.
CO2 Refrigeration In Ships and Rail
Cars
• Upon the beef shipment’s arrival in New Orleans,
Howard ever the entrepreneurial showman threw a
large banquet at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans
in July, 1869 and presented his transported beef to
prominent diners. Because Lowe failed to accomplish
this feat, he has not received proper credit for his
attempt; however, the singular accomplishment of a
refrigerator ship established the compressor process
on refrigeration for ships delivering meat to New York
and Europe. Carbon dioxide is non-toxic and nonflammable and it’s use was employed in marine
refrigeration service well into the twentieth century.
David Boyle Was Getting in the Act
• The birthplace of ammonia-compression refrigeration in the United
States is Jefferson, Texas, where David Boyle, in 1873, established
his first ammonia-compression plant in a lean-to off a lumber mill.
Improvements made during the winter of 1873–74 resulted in a
high-grade production that attracted national attention. When his
machine was destroyed by fire in 1874, Boyle left Texas and went to
Illinois. He eventually made an arrangement with Richard T. Crane
of Crane and Company of Chicago to manufacture his compression
machines. The first two machines produced were bought by the
Capitol Ice Company of Austin and by Richard King, who wanted to
experiment with meat refrigeration on the King Ranch. In 1878
Charles J. Bell installed the first absorption ice machine at Sherman,
Texas.
Charles Zilker in the Mix
• Another early worker in the development of ice-making machinery
was Charles A. Zilker of San Antonio and Austin. After coming to
Austin from Indiana in 1880, he worked in an ice plant that had
been using a Carré machine brought from San Antonio. In 1882 King
asked Zilker and his brother Andrew J. to go to Brownsville and
operate a Boyle ammonia-compression machine at an ice plant that
King had bought in 1876. Zilker returned to Austin in 1884, built his
own plant, and continued improving and designing compressortype ice-making machinery. In business with George W.
Brackenridge, a San Antonio banker, Zilker established ice plants in
Austin and San Antonio. After that he built plants in any city where
he could find enough prosperous people and sufficient cooling
water for compressors. In 1928 he sold his ice plants (which ranged
from Texas eastward to Atlanta and northward to Pittsburgh) to the
Samuel Insull interests, Chicago, for $1 million.
Zilker Patterned Refrigeration Plants
• The Lee Iron Works owned by C.B. Lee, David
Weber and Joshua Miller founded of 1865 was
one of the manufacturers chosen by Mr.
Charles Zilker and his Austin bankers from
1878 to 1928 to build a system of patterned
refrigeration plants from Austin to Atlanta,
Georgia. The ice plants were designed by
Zilker.
Andrew Muhl Death in 1892
• The original Ice House was located between
Franklin and Mary streets on the west bank of the
Brazos River in Waco, Texas and stood at the
present day site of the power house for the
Citizens Railroad Company.
• Andrew Muhl moved to Temple, Texas and
operated an Ice House there for some time. He
died in Temple, Texas from a stroke suffered at
work on January 15, 1892 and is buried in Waco’s
Holy Cross Cemetery.
Refrigeration Pioneers CRC History
Update
• Now you know the rest of the story!