14. Early refrigerators were likely to sicken and kill their owners
The icebox, and the ice man who supplied it with its cooling agent, were ubiquitous in American cities and towns when electrification began. Soon the availability of electricity led to the creation of new products to use electrical power other than for just illumination. One of them was the electric refrigerator, which didn’t require resupplying with blocks of ice, and was thus a symbol of status and success. Electric refrigerators for use in the home were developed in the United States in the second decade of the twentieth century. By the 1920s, refrigerators were available for consumers who had the money to pay for them, but they cost more than a Model T Ford, and were thus too important to remain hidden in the kitchen since the possession of one was a status symbol.
Like the Model T Ford, they were also cranky and could be quite dangerous, since they used ammonia as an absorption material and frequently leaked. The toxic gas was quite caustic, and could easily cause permanent lung damage if it didn’t kill the refrigerator’s owner. They also leaked other gases, equally dangerous, including Sulphur dioxide and methyl chloride. Methyl chloride is also known as chloromethane and is highly flammable, an unwelcome addition to the atmosphere of a kitchen, which had a flame source standing nearby in the form of a stove. The adoption of Freon later in the 1920s made the refrigerator more reliable and safer for the consumer, and by the 1920s the appliance was so reliable that many copies of the General Electric Monitor Top, introduced in 1927, still operate in the 21st century.