Flesh Made Wood: The Invention of Artificial Refrigeration (2014)

The potential of artificial refrigeration inspired grandiose visions of all kinds, and the power of the technology—its ability to arrest decay, to produce a change of state even if only in a humble leg of lamb or slab of butter—seemed to place humankind in a new relationship of mastery over the natural world itself. But although the use of natural ice for refrigeration produced many of the same effects as mechanical refrigeration, it remained reliant on the cycle of the seasons, and was therefore susceptible to the whim and will of Mother Nature. Colonial populations, on the other hand, were nowhere near the size required to absorb the surplus meat produced by the region’s wool economy: sheep outnumbered people twenty-five to one in Australia, and twenty-seven to one in New Zealand in the 1870s and 1880s.

Source: theappendix.net