Il freddo per combattere la fame. Ghiaccio artificiale e frigoriferi alimentari nei mattatoi pubblici in Italia tra il XIX e il XX sec.

Food has been preserved at low temperatures since ancient times, and as far back as the early modern, butchers used ice boxes or early refrigerators which ran on natural ice. During the 19th century, urbanisation and population growth made food supply requirements more urgent, and the old sources of ice were insufficient. In the mid-century, attempts were made to produce ice artificially in Germany, France and the UK, but especially in the USA. This new technology spread to Italy only in the 1890s, and reached a peak during the First World War. Public abattoirs increasingly used early refrigerators and machines for making the ice, which was often retailed and could constitute a significant source of income. The paper describes this process and maps the ice factories immediately after the First World War. It shows how the spread in using ice for food preservation was closely linked to urbanisation, economic development and, in the final analysis, to per capita income. The geographical distribution of ice factories was in fact extremely uneven; they were concentrated in northern- central Italy and in large cities