General Electric Refrigerating Machine - Powell, Wyoming - Household Appliances and Presses on Waymarking.com

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General Electric Refrigerating Machine - Powell, Wyoming

in Household Appliances and Presses

Posted by:  T0SHEA

12T E 677651 N 4957925

The Homesteader Museum, though small in comparison to some state museums, was one of the most interesting we visited. There are typical homesteader cabins, workshops and equipment also displayed outside.

This General Electric Refrigerating Machine is circa 1930.

They started making this style of refrigerator in 1922.

Though in fairly good condition with the motor mounted on the top this style of refrigerator replaced the old ice box common in everyday life of the homemaker. The emblem shows it as a Refrigerating Machine that was later referenced as just refrigerator.

Monday is wash day.

There is information associated with this monitor-top refrigerator.

General Electric Refrigerating Machine

HISTORY FUN FACTS:

Back in the 1920's, one refrigeration company dominated the market: Kelvinator. Its wooden cold box/compressor combo cost $714 (nearly $9,800 today) - way beyond the pocket of the average household! So, General Electric invested $18 million into making the GE 'Monitor-top' fridge, with the goal of making refrigerators more affordable. They were called Monitor-tops because: the cabinet was all steel and the condenser was sealed in a cylindrical enclosure on top.

This made it look like the turret from a 19th-century ironclad warship - the USS Monitor! The Monitor-top worked like modern day fridges. By using a compressor, a circulating refrigerant was transformed from vapor into a liquid and cooled to near-room temperature under pressure, before being released back into circulation. The sudden change in pressure caused the refrigerant to turn into a vapor again, which had to draw heat from the air inside the cabinet, ultimately cooling it.

The most popular was the single-door variant which originally sold for $300.00 in 1927.