Ice cutting is a winter task of collecting surface ice from lakes and rivers for storage in ice houses and use or sale as a cooling method. Rare today, it was common (see ice trade) before the era of widespread mechanical refrigeration and air conditioning technology. [1]
The work was done as a winter chore by many farmers and as a winter occupation by icemen. Kept insulated, the ice was preserved for cold food storage during warm weather, either on the farm or for delivery to residential and commercial customers with ice boxes. A large ice trade existed in the 19th and early 20th centuries, until mechanical refrigeration displaced it.
Ice harvesting generally involved waiting until approximately a foot of ice had built up on the water surface in the winter. The ice would then be cut with either a handsaw or a powered saw blade into long continuous strips and then cut into large individual blocks for transport by wagon back to the ice house. [2] Because snow on top of the ice slows freezing, it could be scraped off and piled in windrows. Alternatively, if the temperature is cold enough, a snowy surface could be flooded to produce a thicker layer of ice. [3] A large operation would have a crew of 75 and cut 1500 tons daily. [4]
Ice cutting was a considerable export industry for northern countries in Scandinavia and North America during the 19th century. It started in the United States around 1800, and spread to Scandinavia around 1820, by which Norway by the mid century became a major exporter to England, Europe, the Mediterranean, and as far away as Kingdom of Kongo, Egypt and New York. [5] Coastal Telemark had 1,300 workers exporting 125,000 tons in 1895–96, while the Oslo Fjord was the main European export region with Nesodden municipality alone employing 1,000 men and exporting 95,000 tons in 1900, at a time when Norway's combined ice export at 500,000 tons stood as the world's largest. [6]
Domestic production and sales were the largest single market source for ice in America and Europe. From the 1850s onwards ice cutting took on large-scale industrial proportions in Germany with Berlin as a key market. [7] In the 1880s, New York City had over 1500 ice delivery wagons and Americans consumed over 5 million tons of ice annually. [8]
Ice cutting is still in use today for ice and snow sculpture events. A swing saw is used to get ice out of a river for the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival each year. A swing saw is also used to cut ice out from the frozen surface of the Songhua River, China. [9] Many ice sculptures are made from the ice harvested this way. In some countries at high latitudes, even ice hotels and ice palaces are made.
Refrigeration is any of various types of cooling of a space, substance, or system to lower and/or maintain its temperature below the ambient one. Refrigeration is an artificial, or human-made, cooling method.
A saw is a tool consisting of a tough blade, wire, or chain with a hard toothed edge used to cut through material. Various terms are used to describe toothed and abrasive saws.
A chainsaw is a handheld saw that cuts with a set of teeth attached to a rotating chain driven along a guide bar. Modern chainsaws are used in activities such as tree felling, limbing, bucking, pruning, cutting firebreaks in wildland fire suppression, harvesting of firewood, for use in chainsaw art and chainsaw mills, for cutting concrete, and cutting ice. Precursors to modern chainsaws were first used in surgery, with patents for wood chainsaws beginning in the late 19th century.
Swedish iron ore was an important economic and military factor in the European theatre of World War II, as Sweden was the main contributor of iron ore to Nazi Germany. The average percentages by source of Nazi Germany’s iron ore procurement through 1933–43 by source were: Sweden: 43.0 Domestic production (Germany): 28.2 France: 12.9. Within the German military the Navy was most dependent on Swedish steel as an absolute necessity to the German war effort, according to their grand admiral. It has also been argued that the Swedish export helped prolong the war.
An ice house, or icehouse, is a building used to store ice throughout the year, commonly used prior to the invention of the refrigerator. Some were underground chambers, usually man-made, close to natural sources of winter ice such as freshwater lakes, but many were buildings with various types of insulation.
A refrigerator car is a refrigerated boxcar (U.S.), a piece of railroad rolling stock designed to carry perishable freight at specific temperatures. Refrigerator cars differ from simple insulated boxcars and ventilated boxcars, neither of which are fitted with cooling apparatus. Reefers can be ice-cooled, come equipped with any one of a variety of mechanical refrigeration systems, or utilize carbon dioxide as a cooling agent. Milk cars may or may not include a cooling system, but are equipped with high-speed trucks and other modifications that allow them to travel with passenger trains.
An ice hotel is a temporary hotel made up of snow and sculpted blocks of ice. Ice hotels, dependent on sub-freezing temperatures, are constructed from ice and snow and typically have to be rebuilt every year. Ice hotels exist in several countries, and they have varying construction styles, services and amenities, the latter of which may include ice bars, restaurants, chapels, saunas and hot tubs.
An ice resurfacer is a vehicle or hand-pushed device for cleaning and smoothing the surface of a sheet of ice, usually in an ice rink. The first ice resurfacer was developed by American inventor and engineer Frank Zamboni in 1949 in Paramount, California. As such, an ice resurfacer is often referred to as a "Zamboni" as a genericized trademark.
An icebox is a compact non-mechanical refrigerator which was a common early-twentieth-century kitchen appliance before the development of safely powered refrigeration devices. Before the development of electric refrigerators, iceboxes were referred to by the public as "refrigerators". Only after the invention of the modern electric refrigerator did early non-electric refrigerators become known as iceboxes. The terms ice box and refrigerator were used interchangeably in advertising as long ago as 1848.
A hole saw, also known as a hole cutter, is a saw blade of annular (ring) shape, whose annular kerf creates a hole in the workpiece without having to cut up the core material. It is used in a drill. Hole saws typically have a pilot drill bit (arbor) at their center to keep the saw teeth from walking. The fact that a hole saw creates the hole without needing to cut up the core often makes it preferable to twist drills or spade drills for relatively large holes (especially those larger than 25 millimetres. The same hole can be made faster and using less power.
The Harbin International Ice and Snow festival is an annual winter festival that takes place with a theme in Harbin, Heilongjiang, China, and now is the largest ice and snow festival in the world. The festival includes the popular attraction Ice and Snow World (冰雪大世界). At first participants in the festival were mainly Chinese, however it has since become an international festival and competition, with the festival attracting 18 million visitors and generating 28.7 billion yuan of revenue. The festival includes the world's biggest ice sculptures.
A wire saw is a saw that uses a metal wire or cable for mechanical cutting of bulk solid material such as stone, wood, glass, ferrites, concrete, metals, crystals etc.. Industrial wire saws are usually powered. There are also hand-powered survivalist wire saws suitable for cutting tree branches. Wire saws are classified as continuous or oscillating. Sometimes the wire itself is referred to as a "blade".
An iceman is someone who sells or delivers ice from a wagon, cart, or motor-truck.
Wenham Lake is a 224-acre body of water located in Wenham and Beverly towns, Essex County, Massachusetts.The lake receives water from the water table and also from a system of streams. In the 19th century, the lake was an important source of ice for export, especially to Britain. Wenham Lake is now a reservoir for the Salem and the Beverly Water Supply Board.
The term fish processing refers to the processes associated with fish and fish products between the time fish are caught or harvested, and the time the final product is delivered to the customer. Although the term refers specifically to fish, in practice it is extended to cover any aquatic organisms harvested for commercial purposes, whether caught in wild fisheries or harvested from aquaculture or fish farming.
The winter of 1946–1947 was a harsh European winter noted for its adverse effects in the United Kingdom. It caused severe hardships in economic terms and living conditions in a country still recovering from the Second World War. There were massive disruptions of energy supply for homes, offices and factories. Animal herds froze or starved to death. People suffered from the persistent cold, and many businesses shut down temporarily. When warm weather returned, the ice thawed and flooding was severe in most low-lying areas.
Boca is a former settlement in Nevada County, California. Situated at an elevation of 5,528 ft (1,685 m) above sea level, Boca is located on the Southern Pacific Railroad, 6.5 miles (10.5 km) northeast of Truckee.
The ice trade, also known as the frozen water trade, was a 19th-century and early 20th-century industry, centering on the east coast of the United States and Norway, involving the large-scale harvesting, transport and sale of natural ice, and later the making and sale of artificial ice, for domestic consumption and commercial purposes. Ice was cut from the surface of ponds and streams, then stored in ice houses, before being sent on by ship, barge or railroad to its final destination around the world.
All regions and seasons of Norway are expected to become warmer and wetter due to climate change.
The Mobile Cook's Galley, part of the Museum of the Riverina, is a heritage-listed former mobile field kitchen and now museum collection and museum exhibit located in the Wagga Wagga Botanic Gardens, Baden Powell Drive, Wagga Wagga, in the City of Wagga Wagga local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed and built in 1934 by Jim McGilvray and Harold Fife. It is also known as the Chaff cutting train. The property is owned by City of Wagga Wagga. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 24 December 2004.
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