The history of artificial cold has been a rather intriguing interdisciplinary subject (physics, chemistry, technology, sociology, economics, anthropology, consumer studies) which despite some excellent monographs and research papers, has not been systematically exploited. It is a subject with all kinds of scientific, technological as well as cultural dimensions. For example, the common home refrigerator has brought about unimaginably deep changes to our everyday lives changing drastically eating habits and shopping mentalities. From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st, issues related to the production and exploitation of artificial cold have never stopped to provide us with an incredibly interesting set of phenomena, novel theoretical explanations, amazing possibilities concerning technological applications and all encompassing cultural repercussions. The discovery of the unexpected and “bizarre” phenomena of superconductivity and superfluidity, the necessity to incorporate macroscopic quantum phenomena to the framework of quantum mechanics, the discovery of Bose-Einstein condensation and high temperature superconductivity, the use of superconducting magnets for high energy particle accelerators, the construction of new computer hardware, the extensive applications of cryomedicine, and the multi billion industry of frozen foods, are some of the more dramatic instances in the history of artificial cold.
Author(s): (auth.), Kostas Gavroglu (eds.)
Series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science 299
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Year: 2014
Language: English
Pages: 288
Tags: History of Science; History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics
Front Matter....Pages i-xii
Historiographical Issues in the History of Cold....Pages 1-17
Front Matter....Pages 19-19
Early Modern History of Cold: Robert Boyle and the Emergence of a New Experimental Field in Seventeenth Century Experimental Philosophy....Pages 21-51
James Dewar and His Route to the Liquefaction of Hydrogen....Pages 53-64
The Cryogenic Laboratory of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes: An Early Case of Big Science....Pages 65-81
Superconductivity—A Challenge to Modern Physics....Pages 83-92
Superfluidity: How Quantum Mechanics Became Visible....Pages 93-117
The Physics of Cold in the Cold War—“On-Line Computing” Between the ICBM Program and Superconductivity....Pages 119-132
Front Matter....Pages 133-133
Domestic Ice-Making Machines 1830–1930....Pages 135-170
Carl Linde and His Relationship with Georges Claude: The Cooperation Between Two Independent Inventors in Cryogenics and Its Side Effects....Pages 171-188
Meeting Artificial Cold: Expositions and Refrigeration, 1896–1937....Pages 189-198
Front Matter....Pages 199-199
The Introduction of Frozen Foods in West Germany and Its Integration into the Daily Diet....Pages 201-229
The Means of Modernization, Freezing Technologies and the Cultural Politics of Everyday Life, Norway 1940–1965....Pages 231-249
The Invention of Refrigerated Transport and the Development of the International Dressed Meat Trade....Pages 251-265
‘Fresher than Fresh’. Consumer Attitudes Towards the Development of the Cold Chain in Post-2WW Greece....Pages 267-280
Back Matter....Pages 281-288
