Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 29/11/1999

This uneven narrative history of scientific and commercial cooling seeks to elucidate the very nature of cold. The concept that cold was simply the absence of heat was itself a long time coming. The 17th-century English natural philosopher Robert Boyle first disproved conventional beliefs that water and wind produced cold. Temperature could only be measured using rudimentary methods, as the thermometer took years to evolve into the mercury-filled glass unit we know today. (Documentary filmmaker Shachtman gives proper kudos to Gabriel Fahrenheit and Anders Celsius.) Shachtman then turns to the evolution of the natural ice business in the 19th century, which allowed frozen food to be carried hundreds of miles and enabled individuals to preserve fresh food at home. While the natural ice industry expanded, laboratory experiments attempted to determine the best way to travel to the "land of Frigor." Nineteenth-century European scientists believed that some combination of temperature and pressure could liquefy all the components of air, but the apparatus for condensing these gases proved increasingly complex and dangerous. First oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and, finally, the difficult-to-obtain element helium were liquefied in a series of contests, each race resulting in a few drops of precious fluid. Shachtman's book comes alive in his highly technical descriptions of the unique and wondrous properties of materials at only a few degrees above absolute zero. After describing the heyday of these experiments in the 1950s, Shachtman backtracks, racing through the technological advances in commercial cooling in the 20th century. At times concise, at other times meandering, this history holds the reader's interest by its intrinsically fascinating subject matter.