James Harrison Refrigeration Process Inventor

Pioneer of the mechanical refrigeration, James Harrison was born in April 1816. he was a Scottish newspaper printer, journalist and a politician. He was the inventor of the refrigeration process. He set up the Victorian Ice Works in Franklin Street, Melbourne in the year 1859.

James Harrison started working early in life. He used to work in London and was also trained as a printing apprentice in Glasgow. He migrated to Sydney, Australia in 1837 and worked under John Pascoe Fawkner as a compositer and then as an editor for Fawkners Port Phillip Patriot.

James Harrison offered his press to John for 30 pounds, when the latter bought a new press. Thus, James started Geelongs first newspaper. He started the weekly edition of the Geelong Advertiser on 21st November, 1840. it was edited by James and printed and published by William Watkins for John Pascoe. James later became the sole owner of the paper by November, 1842.

James Harrison gained huge popularity and became the member of Geelongs 1st town council in 1850. He represented Geelong and Geelong West in the Victorian Legislative Assembly in the years 1859 and 1860. He used the power of his newspaper for a good cause and became an early advocator for tariff protection. He later brought it to a great prominence, when he became an editor of another newspaper, The Age.

James Harrison received a setback in 1854, when a controversial libel suit filed against him by the Crown Prosecutor, George Mackay. James has deplored about Mackays drunkenness in his editorials. He was summoned by the Jury to damages worth 800 pounds. James later had to sell his newspaper, Advertiser to refrain from declaring bankruptcy.

James Harrison developed his interest in ice-making and refrigeration, while he was still working in The Advertiser. He noticed that ether, which was an evaporating fluid, would make the metal cold when touched. The idea led him to invent the 1st mechanical ice-making machine, which started its operation in 1851, on the banks of the Barwon River at Rocky Point in Geelong. He later started manufacturing the ice-making machines commercially in 1854. In the year 1855, James Harrison was granted a patent for the ether liquid-vapor compression refrigeration system. This revolutionary idea paved the way for the modern refrigerators.

James Harrison used a compressor upon a refrigerant gas and then forced the compressed gas to pass through a condenser, where it cooled down and liquefied. It in turn cooled down the surrounding system by circulating through refrigeration coils and vaporizing again. The machine used a 5m flywheel and was able to produce 3000kgs of ice per day. He soon established a 2nd ice company in Sydney in 1860, but met a setback, when his experiment to export meat from Australia to England in a Cold Bank resulted in a disaster. He had to switch back to journalism and joined the newspaper, The Age. He returned to Geelong in 1892 and died in the following year. His work was critical in the continued development of refrigeration resulting in the transportation of meat and other perishable products throughout the globe by using his techniques. Wikipedia