The first model of the Frigidaire refrigerator, circa 1921. UPI/Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission.

Today, refrigerators are taken for granted as one of the most common appliances in America, but it was not always so. Before refrigerators, people tried to preserve their food in cool places like streams, caves, and snow banks. As more people moved into cities, however, a better solution was needed.

By the early 1800s, people kept blocks of ice in insulated wooden cabinets called "ice cabinets." The widespread use of ice cabinets created the ice-harvesting industry in the northern states. Ice harvesters cut blocks of ice from frozen lakes and shipped them to warmer parts of the country. When the Civil War (1861–65) broke out in 1861, ice was one of the first supplies to be cut off from the southern states, leaving southerners' ice cabinets empty and their food rotting. By the early 1890s, warm winters...