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 AlcaseRegion.

• 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)The image cannot be displayed. Your computer may not have enough memory to open the image, or the image may have been corrupted. Restart your computer, and then open the file again. If the red x still appears, you may have to delete the image and then insert it again.

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 non-flammable 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 compressor-type 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!