Richard Shotton

I didn't even think, I just knew.

Now, I've traveled enough abroad to know that that is not the case anywhere else in the world.

Only in the United States could you go to a convenience store or a gas station and just know that ice is going to be available.

It's funny, our obsession with ice is only about 200 years old.

It can be said to have begun in 1806 when a wealthy Bostonian named Frederick Tudor landed on the idea to start carving large blocks of ice out of his Massachusetts lake and sell them to people living in warm climates around the world for a profit.

Most of the people in his social class thought he was a madman for even thinking of the idea because nobody had ever shipped long distances, shipped ice long distances before, but he figured out how to do it.

And he started bringing ice to these warm places where through a lot of work on his part, he got them to accept the substance into their everyday lives and they became crazy about it.

Well, you know, Tudor made a lot of questionable business decisions, but he was a pretty smart man.

And what he noticed is that the ice that was kept in his ice house.

Now, side note, an ice house is basically a large well that's dug about 10 to 15 feet in the ground where ice can be kept year round if it's packed properly.

And what he'd noticed is that properly packed ice, even in the summer months, can withstand, you know, heats above ground, you know, into the 80s and 90s.

And to pack it properly, you just have to make sure that there isn't a lot of room between the blocks so that air can't get through it because air does expedite melting.

Ice blocks were usually packed in sawdust in straw, which also helped to ward off some of the heat and the blocks were elevated so they weren't sitting in their own melt water, which also sped up melting.

So he basically recreated the conditions of an ice house in the cargo hold of a ship.

And when he sailed as far as the Caribbean, he managed to make it with about two thirds of his cargo still frozen.

Well, this is the funny thing.

It actually at first was used for cocktails because here's the thing that sparked the American obsession with ice.

It was an outrageous marketing plan.

And the reason why Tudor had to launch this marketing plan is because when he first brought ice to these warm climates, to places where ice rarely, if ever, formed naturally, people had no idea what to do with it.

they hadn't even seen the stuff so they didn't know how to you know make delicious treats with it or how to use it to reduce swelling from an injury or anything like that so in order to get people to buy the ice that he wanted to sell he went to the local bartenders and baristas and he said i'm going to give you some of this weird frozen wet substance for free if you let me show you how to use it to make the most delicious things