1877:

Sales of the First Linde Chilling Machine

Before Carl Linde founded the Linde Company, he was a professor of mechanical engineering at the Academy of Technology in Munich. A competition for a chilling apparatus to recrystallize paraffin brought him into the refrigeration technology research field. There may already have been chilling machines before then, but they worked inefficiently. Linde developed the theoretical concept of an “improved ice and chilling machine” and published the results of his research. August Deiglmayr from the Dreher Brewery in Austria and Gabriel Sedlmayr from Munich’s Spaten Brewery were immediately interested, because they were hoping to find a year-round reliable refrigerating option for their breweries. In 1873, together with Carl Linde they commissioned the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg (later MAN) to construct a trial machine based on Linde’s design.

To this day, refrigerators function like Linde’s chilling machine. A refrigerant, for example an easy-to-liquefy gas, is heated by compression and then cooled down in the ambient air. After that, the compressed refrigerant is significantly cooled down below the original temperature through expansion.

The first Linde ice machine was delivered to the Spaten Brewery in 1874, but it still had a few glitches. The main problem was the quicksilver seal, which didn’t function properly, allowing the methyl ether used for the refrigeration process to escape from the compressor. The problem of developing a functional seal was a general dilemma at that time. Albert Einstein had also concerned himself with this question, without, however finding a solution. Along with his assistant, Friedrich Schipper, Carl Linde finally designed a new compressor using glycerin as a sealing material and ammonia as a refrigerant. The sealing problem was now solved. This new chilling machine went into operation in 1877 at the Dreher Brewery in Trieste and ran there for 31 years.

The first sold Linde refrigerating machine

Despite the success of his ice machine, Linde, constantly striving for improvements, came up with a third, horizontal construction. This new cold vapor machine proved – based on its price-performance ratio – to be the best on the market and became the standard model for decades. Linde’s chilling machines ranked as dependable, long-lasting, safe and cost-effective.

After Linde, along with his friends in the brewing industry, had developed a reliably functional and economically operating refrigeration system, he soon found purchasers all over the world, because the new technology provided the necessary refrigeration for the fermentation and storage of the beer even in warm winters, when the ice otherwise necessary was in short supply.

Besides the breweries, abattoirs developed into the most important customers for refrigeration units. Not until the emergence of this new refrigeration technology could meat be stored for longer periods of time and transported over longer distances without spoiling. Linde’s refrigeration units not only chilled the air but also cleansed and dried it simultaneously to avoid the formation of condensed water.

Further applications for the new refrigeration technology were, among others, ice rinks for skaters, chilling and freezing units for ships and railway cars, units for air humidification and refrigeration in residential areas and industrial units for chilling milk in dairies or for refrigeration in sugar and chocolate factories.