James Harrison

Australian refrigeration pioneer James Harrison has highlighted in an episode of ABC rural affairs plan Landline.

In advance of the Scotland-born innovator’s birthday on April 17, the method charted Harrison’s exploits in creating an ice machine in his adopted Victorian home of Geelong in the mid-1800s.

Landline also explored factors for Harrison’s lack of renown provided the enormity of his achievements, and efforts by science, history and refrigeration buffs to build a museum in his honour.

“There’s not significantly to see – a tangle of scrub at the base of a rock-strewn slope – but Rocky Stage in Geelong is a website of globe importance,” claimed Landline journalist Tim Lee.

“There was after a cave right here, loaded in extensive in the past by authorities who considered it unsafe, and a substantial get rid of that drew in h2o from the Barwon River and transformed it into ice. A modest plaque on a boulder scarcely does justice to its great importance. It was listed here in 1854 that inventor, journalist, and newspaper proprietor James Harrison had his eureka moment — productively trapping escaping gas and using it as a refrigerant.”

The episode stated that Harrison applied a compressor to pressure the gasoline to go through a condenser, exactly where it cooled down and liquefied.

This, of course, is the foundation of refrigeration, the similar principle still utilised right now in fridges and air conditioners all over the entire world.

In accordance to folklore, in his role as founder and editor of the Geelong Advertiser newspaper, Harrison discovered that using sulphuric ether to clean the information style produced the steel chilly.

By means of a series of experiments in his cave, Harrison found his way to refrigeration and ice-generating, sooner or later setting up Australia’s to start with ice-building equipment. He in the long run recognized ice-producing factories in the Uk, Geelong, and close to Australia.

Given his astonishing initiatives in science, quite a few marvel why Harrison is not a domestic identify, like Westinghouse or Provider.

Probably disputes above the origin of refrigeration could have a thing to do with this, or that a demo run of refrigerated meat from Australia to England ended in failure, ignominy, and bankruptcy for Harrison.

Nonetheless, a passionate team of Harrison buffs hope to at some point set up a Harrison museum.

As a comply with-up to the Landline episode, AIRAH CEO Tony Gleeson highlighted as just one of the pro attendees on ABC Melbourne radio Conversation Hour about Harrison and his adventures in ice-generating and refrigeration.