On this site you will find pictures and information about some of the electrical , electrotechnical and mechanical
technology relics that the Frank Sharp Private museum has accumulated over the years .
There are lots of vintage electrical and electronic items that have not survived well or even completely disappeared and forgotten.
Or are not being collected nowadays in proportion to their significance or prevalence in their heyday, this is bad and the main part of the death land. The heavy, ugly sarcophagus; models with few endearing qualities, devices that have some over-riding disadvantage to ownership such as heavy weight,toxicity or inflated value when dismantled, tend to be under-represented by all but the most comprehensive collections and museums. They get relegated to the bottom of the wants list, derided as 'more trouble than they are worth', or just forgotten entirely. As a result, I started to notice gaps in the current representation of the history of electronic and electrical technology to the interested member of the public.
Following this idea around a bit, convinced me that a collection of the peculiar alone could not hope to survive on its own merits, but a museum that gave equal display space to the popular and the unpopular, would bring things to the attention of the average person that he has previously passed by or been shielded from. It's a matter of culture. From this, the Under The Ice Web Museum concept developed and all my other things too. It's an open platform for all electrical Electronic TV technology to have its few, but NOT last, moments of fame in a working, hand-on environment. We'll never own Colossus or Faraday's first transformer, but I can show things that you can't see at the Science Museum, and let you play with things that the Smithsonian can't allow people to touch, because my remit is different.
There was a society once that was the polar opposite of our disposable, junk society. A whole nation was built on the idea of placing quality before quantity in all things. The goal was not “more and newer,” but “better and higher" .This attitude was reflected not only in the manufacturing of material goods, but also in the realms of art and architecture, as well as in the social fabric of everyday life. The goal was for each new cohort of children to stand on a higher level than the preceding cohort: they were to be healthier, stronger, more intelligent, and more vibrant in every way.
The society that prioritized human, social and material quality is a Winner. Truly, it is the high point of all Western civilization. Consequently, its defeat meant the defeat of civilization itself.
Today, the West is headed for the abyss. For the ultimate fate of our disposable society is for that society itself to be disposed of. And this will happen sooner, rather than later.
OLD, but ORIGINAL, Well made, Funny, Not remotely controlled............. and not Made in CHINA.
How to use the FREON12MUSEUM site:- If you landed here via any Search Engine, you will get what you searched for and you can search more using the search this blog feature provided by Google. You can visit more posts scrolling the right blog archive of all posts of the month/year,or you can click on the main photo-page to start from the main page. If doing so it starts from the most recent post to the older post simple clicking on the Older Post button on the bottom of each page after reading , post after post.You can even visit all posts, time to time, reaching the bottom end of each page then click on the Older Post button.
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So you can see all the blog/site content surfing all pages in it.
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" In the world of 2000's , if we need a cold drink we might go to the refrigerator for a few ice cubes or if there is a fancy model of refrigerator available, then we might have ice water right on tap! Things weren’t always like this however, that is before modern refrigeration.
THE COOLING HISTORY
Chilling has been known for centuries as a preservative for
perishable foods. A preservative, which was only accessible in places, where people could obtain ice during the winter. In practice, ice from lakes and rivers were cut in blocks and stored in heavily insulated rooms or pits from which it was retrieved when needed for cooling.
By use of the mechanical refrigeration, cold production became easier, because the ice could now be manufactured artificially. Now ice factories popped up, where blocks of ice were produced in large-scale operations and delivered to dairies, from which the consumer could fetch ice. The ice was placed in an ice box at home in the kitchen in which it melted and cooled the contents. The principle sounds old-fashioned, but the method was actually used up until the mid-1900s.
Gradually it became possible to produce the refrigerator systems so relatively small that they could be moved to where the cold was to be used. This meant, for example, that a refrigerator system could be placed in the basement and from there the refrigerant was circulated to insulated cabinets placed in the apartments.
Danfoss supplied expansion valves to control the temperature in these refrigeration systems. The expansion valve was Danfoss’ first, largest, and most important product.
In the world of 1810 in Cuba, the ice for our iced drink would need to be imported from the New England states at more than 500 dollars per the ton – that’s a lot of 1810 money! Obviously ice is a very important thing if Boston, at the same time, exported approximately 65,000 tons of ice per year; this is before mechanical refrigeration. Ice traditionally has been very important not only in good drinks, but it has also been critical to hospitals. It is then appropriate that a doctor, Scottish Dr. John Gorrie, received the first patent for mechanical refrigeration in 1842 to help his feverish patients.
After the advent of mechanical refrigeration, the need for ice shipped from temperate climates began to drop10. By 1855 the man made ice was being used in breweries and meat plants, but the new ice machines weren’t without problems. First, the refrigerant of choice for the 19th century ice machine is ammonia, which has the drawbacks of being highly toxic, corrosive, and difficult to compress.
The net result is that the ice machines were massive (as big as a typical kitchen), steam powered (the best source of energy in the 19th century for large equipment – needing constant boiler attendance), required a lot of maintenance and were the source of industrial accidents. An alternative had to be found!
Chemists, on the job, made a technological breakthrough: Sulfur dioxide is compressed readily and has a good latent heat* of 25 kJ/mol
Chemists and physicists were able to put a kitchen sized version of the refrigerator on the market after World War One.
Unfortunately, sulfur dioxide isn’t the most pleasant refrigerant: Early refrigerators leaked and if they didn’t, sulfur dioxide is corrosive, so they soon would. Additionally, sulfur dioxide is noted for its odor.
These early refrigerants were just not satisfying the public: they wanted something that would not stink up the house, burn it down, or kill them outright! It is with this criterion in mind that Frigidaire Division of GM set out to come up with a solution. They appointed Robert McNary, Thomas Midgley and Albert Henne to the task of finding performing, inert refrigerants for use in the household. It is this team that discovered dichlorodifluoromethane as a refrigerant in 1928 ."
By the late 1930's the North American refrigeration industry was moving rapidly to the adoption of fully "hermetic" systems, in which the motor and compressor where sealed in a single steel dome, which was connected to the evaporator in a seamless, integrated design not requiring the services of a skilled, field, refrigeration mechanic. The fully hermetic design for the household cabinet refrigerator was the next evolutionary step towards improving performance, reliability and life expectancy, all of which would increase dramatically. Kelvinator made significant contribution to the development of hermetic system design, Kelvinator of Canada, Circa 1955
Technical Significance
The change in performance, reliability and life expectancy which accompanied the wing to hermetic design could scarcely be over estimated. The period of regular motor oiling, drive belt replacement and leaking compressors and tubing connectors was gone. The operating life expectancy of such systems was all of a sudden 20 years or more.
Many contemporary appliances would not have this level of staying power, many would ware out or require major services within just five years or less and of course, there is that perennial bug bear of planned obsolescence where components our deliberately designed to fail or manufactured with limited edition specificities.
.......The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of todays funny silly crap gadgets low price has faded from memory.....Every OLD Refrigerator saved let revive knowledge, thoughts, Cool engineering, noises, moments of the past life which will never return again.........
Don't forget the past, the end of the world is upon us! Pretty soon it will all turn to dust!Have big FUN ! !©2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 Frank Sharp - You do not have permission to copy photos and words from this blog, and any content may be never used it for auctions or commercial purposes,
however feel free to post anything you see here with a courtesy link back, btw a link to the original post here , is mandatory.All sets and apparates appearing here are property ofEngineer Frank Sharp. NOTHING HERE IS FOR SALE !
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