Ice
Ice names 4 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Ice water in a solid state
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
water in a solid state. Under ordinary conditions, water changes to ice at 32 deg. F. and 0 deg. C. In freezing, the molecules arrange themselves in hexagonal crystals, as may be seen by the examination of a snowflake. When exposed to the heat of the sun, ice not infrequently falls into six-sided needles or columns. One hundred volumes of water make 109 volumes of ice. Ice is lighter than water and floats, therefore, on its surface, protecting ponds and lakes from being frozen to a greater depth. Ice is far from being rigid. In fact, it is so fluid-like that on the slopes of mountains it runs down slowly, forming oftentimes enormous streams of ice, called glaciers. If a long slab of ice be supported at the two ends, the center will curve downward. A slight jar facilitates the formation of ice. If perfectly quiet, water will cool several degrees below the freezing point without solidifying; but a jar, which, no doubt, facilitates the rearrangement of the molecules, will turn it suddenly into ice. Under pressure sufficient to prevent expansion, water may be cooled far below the freezing point and yet remain a liquid. Seawater frezes at about 27 deg. F. The ice in some way drives down or excludes nearly all of the salt. The people of the Mediterranean early learned the use of ice in cooling drinks. They depended largely, however, on snow brought from the Alps and other mountain peaks. Artificial ice has been produced for many centuries in oriental countries. Even at the present day the natives of the East Indies manufacture large quantities of ice. They dig a large, shallow pit and fill it level full of crushed sugar-cane stalks to secure perfect drainage. On these beds of dry cane they place shallow earthenware pans of water. The ware is so porous that the pans are no sooner filled with water than moisture appears on the outside. The evaporation of water, as is well known, absorbs immense quantities of heat. Evaporation takes place so rapidly on the outside of these dishes that, when the operation is carried on after nightfall, the water left in the dish is turned into a cake of ice. An establishment of this sort, described by a recent writer, contains 100,000 of these pans and is managed by 300 attendants. They draw water from a well and fill the pans in the day time. In the morning they go about with hooks and lift the cakes of ice from the pans and store them for use. It is necessary to grease the inside of the pan slightly to prevent the cake of ice from adhering to the earthenware. Farmers' boys have long followed a similar method of keeping water cool in the field. If the jug of water be surrounded by a wet bag or sack, the evaporation draws heat from the jug and keeps its contents delightfully cool. The Australian traveler carries water in a cloth canteen. The small amount of water that escapes through the cloth and evaporates keeps the contents cool. It is even reported that railway companies take advantage of this method to hang cloth tanks of water on the rear platform of observation cars. The breeze created by the motion of the train evaporates the escaping moisture and affords the passengers a delightful drink. The plan seems plausible, at least. On the same principle, of evaporation, ammonia is used to make ice. The details are too extended for description. In brief, cakes of ice are frozen somewhat like ice cream in freezers. The surounding brine is chilled to a bitter coldness by pipes in which liquid ammonia is evaporated. The brine absorbs the heat from the water and ice forms. The ammonia is used over and over with little loss. Artificial ice costs from fifty cents to $1.50 a ton, but the cost is falling. Very naturally artificial ice is used in warm countries to which the importation of natural ice would be expensive. The first ice factory in the United States was established in New Orleans in 1866. The extent to which ammonia-made ice is used in the United States may surprise the reader. There are, according to a late census report, 1,500 American ice plants producing between 8,000,000 and 9,000,000 tons of artificial ice yearly. If we take cold storage warehouses into account, nearly half of the ice used in the United States is made by artificial means. Artificial ice is made in the form of briquettes. Throughout the Southern states ice is packed in gunny sacks and shipped to the smaller towns with the utmost regularity. Housekeepers buy their daily brick of ice along with other supplies. The number of wagons engaged in distributing city ice is very great. In New York and Brooklyn alone there are 1,500 ice wagons. They distribute 5,000,000 tons a year. Philadelphia requires half as much. Natural ice is harvested at a cost of from twenty-five to eighty cents a ton. The harvest of natural ice is a very important matter in the colder states. The icemen of Maine and the Hudson River put up over 2,000,000 tons a year. The other ice states harvest as much more. The Canadian provinces also harvest large amounts of excellent ice. We used to export ice, particularly to southern Europe and the West Indies. In 1870 our exports of ice rose to 65,000 tons, but improved methods of making artificial ice abroad have reduced our exports to a merely nominal quantity. In seasons of scarcity ice is brought by ships from Norway to New York. The manufacture of artificial ice is increasing rapidly in European countries. A domestic ice machine not much more complex than an ice cream freezing machine is sold in German markets at fifteen dollars. Artificial ice as clear as crystal is made from the waters of the historic pools of Jerusalem. It is sold to the hotels, hospitals, foreign residents, and wealthy people of the city at two and one-half cents a pound. There is a newly erected ice plant at Smyrna, built by an American company, and it is now doing a good business. An ice plant here has been making daily about six tons of poor ice, which it sold at $15 per ton. The new company makes from distilled water a fine, clear ice, which it sells at $5 a ton, and although it has been running scarcely thirty days, it is selling twenty-five to forty tons of ice daily. The company has some unique competition from the mountain folk, who bring to Smyrna snow packed in skins. They save the snow in the winter by having it packed in trenches and covered with pine needles. The Turks are very conservative, and it is difficult to get some of them to use ice instead of the snow to which they have been accustomed for many years, even though the latter costs them one cent a pound, or $20 a ton. The new company puts a block of ice in a box with small circular saws at one end and produces an article that can not be distinguished from snow, and which is sold in successful competition with the mountain snow.--Consular Report. See Cold Storage ; Bacteria; Skating; Glacier ; Greenland
Ice water in solid form
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
water in solid form. It is speabout to freeze, and therefore floats in it. The formation of ice takes place is owing to the peculiarity that, when water has ( at the ordinary atmospheric pressure) cooled down to within 3.9 ° C. of freezing, it ceases to contract as tan in 1839, Ibrahim was did before with increase of cold, and beful, totally routing the Turks gins to expand till it freezes ( see HEAT). great battle of Nisib. The In some instances, not very well exof the great Powers eventually plained, ice forms at the bottom of him to relinquish all his rivers and is called ground - ice or anchorquests and return to Egypt. In ice. Water in ordinary cases freezes at the degree of temperature marked 0° on the Centigrade and Réaumur's thermometers and 32° on Fahrenheit's, but if it is kept perfectly still it may be cooled to nearly 5.5° C. below freezing (22° F.) and still remain liquid. Sea-water, and salt water in general, freezes at a lower temperature than pure water; in doing this, part of the salt separates, and the ice when melted, gives water that is fresher than that on which the ice was formed. In the neighborhood of the poles, and on mountains of a certain height in all latitudes, there exist immense masses of permanent ice; and even in some districts of Siberia, where a kind of culture is practicable in summer, there are found, at a certain depth below the surface of the earth, strata of ice, mingled with sand. Nansen and Peary discovered that the entire surface of Greenland, except the mountainous coasts, is covered with the largest ice-cap known to exist, having a supposed depth of several thousand feet. The W. coast of Greenland produces most of the icebergs that float in the North Atlantic. From the polar icefields and glaciers which are always protruding themselves into the sea, great great floating masses become detached and form icebergs, floes, and drift ice (see GLACIER). From the specific gravity it is calculated that the volume of an iceberg below the water is about nine times that of the protruding part. The trade in ice is now one of great and increasing importance. Ice has come to be more and more largely used in preserving provisions, both in refrigerating chambers and otherwise. In surgical operations it is used to produce partial anæsthesia; it serves in fevers to cool the mouth and reduce the internal temperature, while ice in bags, applied to the spine, is found helpful in many cases of sea-sickness and in other applications. In 1799 the first cargo of ice was sent from New York to Charleston, and ice was imported into England from Norway on a considerable scale as early as 1823. The export of ice from the United States was begun about 1805 by a merchant named Tudor, who sent ice from Boston to the West Indies. After persevering against many losses he succeeded in 1833 in establishing a trade with Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay; and now not only is it sent in vast quantities to these places, but also Hong Kong and Batavia. Triest sends ice to Egypt, Corfu, and Zante; Switzerland sends it to France, and Germany sometimes gets her supply from the Bavarian lakes. In the United States the ice harvest is gathered in on an enormous scale and
Ice ARTIFICIAL, ice frozen by mechanical or chemical means
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
ARTIFICIAL, ice frozen by mechanical or chemical means. It has the great advantage of being easily rendered chemically pure, and it can be manufactured in the hottest countries. Its commercial value in the preservation and transportation of meats, fruits, etc., and for other purposes, can scarcely be estimated. The water is first boiled and allowed to settle. It is then distilled, boiled again and run through three kinds of filters. Underneath the great square middle space of the freezing room, which is paved with large rectangular removable tiles, is a series of tanks. These contain a strong solution of brine, and through it run scores of pipes which are charged with liquefied ammonia gas. When this volatile chemical leaves the engine room it is in the form of a fluid, but in making its long journey along the pipes which thread their way through the brine it evaporates into gas. The evaporating process within absorbs so much heat from the surrounding mass of salt and water that the distilled water in the rectangular ice cans submerged in the brine is congealed into the finest ice. Each can contains 300 pounds of distilled water, which remains in its cold bath 48 hours. Natural gas is often employed in the process of manufacturing artificial ice. As it escapes from the borings with a pressure of 20 to 30 atmospheres, the lowering of the temto freeze perature as it is released serves more water even in summer. A still simple and inexpensive process of prein connection paring artificial ice is used with the newly-perfected method of conliquid. densing the atmosphere into a ab- The rapid evaporation of liquid air heat and sorbs an immense amount of is everything brought into contact with it frozen.
Ice ARTIFICIAL with an elaborate system of apparatus
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
ARTIFICIAL with an elaborate system of apparatus. The ice is cleared trom snow by means of an implement called the snow-plane. An ice-plow, drawn by horses, and driven by a man riding on it, or propelled by steam, is then made to cut deep parallel grooves in the ice, and these are again crossed by other grooves at right angles, so that the whole of the surface is deeply marked out into small squares measuring a little more than three feet. A few of these square blocks being de-- tached by handsaws, the remainder are easily broken off with crowbars, and floated away to the ice-storehouses, which are usually built of wood, on the borders of the lake or river. The blocks of ice are covered up with sawdust, a layer being placed between each tier of blocks. Many of these ice-houses are made large enough to hold from 40,000 to 80,000 tons of ice. Throughout the States, except in the extreme N., the manufacture of artificial ice is extensively carried on. The building of ice-edifices was, and perhaps still is, a winter amusement in Russia; and in the New World, Montreal sets the example of an annual ice-carnival, one of the features of which is the building of a great ice-palace, and of icemonuments of various kinds.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 account describes a living industry: 1,500 ice wagons in New York and Brooklyn, Maine and Hudson River crews cutting over 2,000,000 tons of natural ice a year, and ammonia plants just beginning to overtake them. That trade collapsed within a generation, as the electric household refrigerator (mass-marketed from the 1920s) removed the need for a daily delivered brick of ice; commercial ice today is a convenience good for coolers and drinks, not a cold-storage necessity. The physics in the entry still holds — the hexagonal crystals, the roughly 9 per cent expansion on freezing, the supercooled water that solidifies at a jar — but chemists now recognise some twenty distinct crystalline forms of ice at high pressures and low temperatures, rather than the single substance implied here. Ice has also become an archive: cores drilled in Antarctica and Greenland since the 1950s carry trapped air and annual layers reaching back more than 800,000 years.
Written for this edition, 2026.