Geelong will host a series of events on World Refrigeration Day – Wednesday, June 26 – to honour hometown hero and refrigeration pioneer James Harrison. Local historian Lex Chalmers shares the details.
Geelong is Australia’s only UNESCO City of Design. Its designation was achieved in part because of James Harrison, whose world-changing invention of commercial refrigeration took place in the city in the 1850s.
There’s no doubt that Harrison’s pioneering work has improved the health and welfare of humanity for more than a century. However, his contributions to science and engineering have largely been forgotten in Australia’s scientific community, our knowledge economy, and even in his hometown of Geelong.
Modern refrigeration still relies on the processes he designed, engineered, and patented 170 years ago in what Europeans then considered to be a far-flung colonial backwater. The science of climate control – which emerged thanks to Harrison’s work – has enabled humans to go places that would never have been considered possible during his day, including into space.
The man, the myth, the legend
Temperature mattered in Harrison’s day, too. He was accustomed to Scotland’s cooler climate, but in Australia, his fishing catch spoiled in the warm weather.
He wasn’t just a keen scientific mind; he was also the founder, owner, editor of the Geelong Advertiser. While cleaning printing type with ether, he noticed that as it evaporated, it chilled the type. The condensation would often freeze over.
Harrison wanted to harness this property and embarked on experiments pumping volatile chemicals under steam pressure through a closed coil immersed in brine, resulting in a machine that could make three tonnes of ice a day. His first patent also referred to the cooling of air.
Today, with rapid climate change looming, temperature matters more than ever. It’s time for the legend of James Harrison to come in from the cold, so it’s fitting that we will celebrate 170 years of his great invention in Geelong, Australia’s UNESCO City of Design, on World Refrigeration Day: Wednesday, June 26.
What’s on
Together with the Geelong Showgrounds Museum and assisted by the Royal Geelong Agricultural and Pastoral Society (RGAPS), the Geelong and Region Branch of the National Trust (GRBNT) is steadily re-establishing knowledge of Harrison’s significance in advancing science, medicine, and food manufacture, preservation, and transport.
By celebrating his achievements on World Refrigeration Day, these local organisations are looking to increase the public’s understanding of his work and contributions to society.
- The Geelong Showgrounds Museum will host open days on Wednesday, June 26 and Saturday, June 29 from 10 am to 4 pm. The Museum features panels showing Harrison’s life and times, a collection of early domestic refrigerators (it took other inventors 70 years to scale Harrison’s process down to domestic size), and farming memorabilia. Tickets are available through Trybooking.
- An evening event will be held on World Refrigeration Day for invited industry representatives and supporters.
- There will be a public event at 11am on Thursday, June 27 at the Eastern Cemetery, Ormond Rd, East Geelong to mark the refurbishment of Harrison’s grave by his descendants.
At these events, engineer and model maker Warwick Bryce will demonstrate his model of Harrison’s 1857 commercial ice-making machine to show how it made ice.
Keep on discovering
In 2021 during Geelong’s UNESCO Design Week, GRBNT held an exhibition and a live-streamed a discussion about Harrison’s life and achievements. Later, the ABC’s Landline program interviewed members about Harrison for a series on Australian scientists. You can see Landline’s “A very cool idea” and the live-streamed discussion on the GRBNT website.
Source: hvacrnews.com.au
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