(240 pages)
Quick read; much of the technical stuff was out of my zone and I hurried through it; the overall ideas (what is cold? how is it "attacked" and then utilized?) were rather amazing.
Is it absence of heat? Something else? How to study this? For millennia it's been easy to create heat and "see what happens" - not so with cold. Philosophers and in turn what became known as "scientists" take various paths.
Even inventing accurate thermometers, figuring out measurements. Seeking to liquify pretty much every gas; some present incredible challenges. Pushing toward absolute zero. As with so many breakthroughs, there's more than one person chasing the idea, disputes over discoveries, etc.
Our friend Faraday is influential ("Age of Wonder"). Talented guy!
The parts about harvesting ice, learning to pack it and ship it to tropical locations, figuring out how to convince customers that they needed or wanted the product - this part is interesting and easily relatable. We have photographs from St. Joe in early 20th century of folks harvesting ice from the Des Moines River northeast of town. Grandparents had a literal icebox (prior to electricity).
Technology changed so much about food production and distribution - made things possible - in the US, this overlapped with opening up the West. Air conditioning's effect on settlement patterns.
I had vaguely heard about superconductivity (at extreme low temperatures); good discussion about how this enable computer/tech development. This was written in 1999 so it would be interesting to know about further developments here. Except I wouldn't understand it very well.
