The first commercial refrigerator was created by Fred W. Wolf and wasn't available until 1913

 The first commercial refrigerator was created by Fred W. Wolf and wasn't available until 1913

Many of us have grown up with magnets adorning our fridges, but we’ve never really questioned why.

It’s become increasingly common to find a household fridge that is covered in some sort of magnet, whether it’s a promotional magnet or a souvenir.

If you’re a curious person then maybe you’ve stood in front of your fridge and pondered why we use them, and how they came to be.

We’re going to take a look into the history of fridge magnets and explain how these handy placeholders ended up on our fridges.

Before we do that, though, it’s best if we quickly refresh what magnets are exactly

During the summer months, refrigeration is probably on our minds more than ever. Workers in offices everywhere often pass their colleagues with throw-away comments such as “It’s a hot one today!” or “I wish I could sit in the fridge!”. This classic summertime statement may lead you to wonder where we would be without our trusty refrigerator, or even where it all began… This week’s heatwave-inspired Throwback Thursday will answer those questions! Today we’re looking at the history of the fridge, so let’s find out more…

The practice of storing ice and cooling food and drink has been around for thousands of years. It started around 1000 BCE in China, where people would cut and store ice. Five hundred years later, the Egyptians and Indians would leave earthenware pots outside during cold nights, having learned that ice would gather. It’s also thought that Greeks, Hebrews and Romans had their methods of cooling, involving a snow pit.

The concept of mechanical refrigeration, not quite as we know it today but closer than a snow pit, came about in the 1720s. Scottish doctor, William Cullen, noticed that when evaporation takes place, it provides a cooling effect, and in 1748, he demonstrated his findings.

Between 1805 and the 1820s, both American inventor Oliver Evans and English inventor Michael Faraday, made contributions to the cold cause with a prototype design and liquid ammonia for cooling. However, our father of the fridge credit goes to Oliver Evans’ colleague, Jacob Perkins. In 1835, he patented a vapour compression cycle that used liquid ammonia. Whether Evans and Faraday took that lightly or not, we couldn’t comment.