16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Monday, October 2, 1911: It is beginning to get cold. Am
thinking about my hat and coat, which are in the store as yet,
but it doesn’t do very much good anyway. Her middle-aged
granddaughter’s comments 100 years later: A hundred years ago
people sometimes took their winter coats, and other wool and fur
garments, to a cold storage facility. This was done to help
ensure that the clothes won’t be damaged by moths during the
warm weather months. I don’t understand exactly how cold storage
rooms were kept cold, but the rooms probably were cooled by
pipes filled with brine or ammonia. Compression machines may
have been used. There were a number of different methods
described in a 1905 book, but a common method is described
below: In this system, the ammonia gas is driven off from aqua
ammonia under pressure, by heating; the gas is liquefied by
cooling, and the refrigerating effect obtained by expanding the
liquid ammonia thus obtained though pipes surroun