Description: Ice Harvesting Machinery and Tools, Reprinted from Catalog No. 18, 1919, originally published by the Gifford-Wood Company, Hudson, New York, 1919. Reproduced by Nation Builder Books, Leesburg, VA, 2003. 5½ x 8½ paperback, 46 pages. Please note that this is a photoduplicated reproduction of the 1919 original. The accompanying images were scanned from a reprint, not the original. Before there was refrigeration, there was ice. Not the nice little cubes you buy today in five- or eight-pound plastic bags. Nope, we’re talking real, honest-to-God NATURAL ice, at least eight inches thick, and in more northern parts of the U.S., such as New England or Minnesota, huge BLOCKS of ice weighing hundreds of pounds, cut and sawn out of ponds, lakes, and rivers, then stored until it was used in the summer. Companies were even formed to dig ponds in which water would freeze during the winter, yielding a harvest of ice. One such was the original business at the site of Fort Ritchie, Maryland, the Buena Vista (Pa.) Ice Co., which stored the ice in icehouses next to its ponds, then shipped it during 22 summers, from 1903 to 1925, to Baltimore, Washington and points south via the Western Maryland Railway, the Baltimore & Ohio, and other lines. You may be surprised at the size and importance of the U.S. ice harvesting industry a century ago. At its peak in 1886, over 25 million tons of ice were harvested in the United States, nearly FOUR TIMES the amount of pig iron produced in the U.S. that year (6.365 million tons; steel production was 2.870 million tons). It was not until 1905 that the U.S. produced more than 25 million tons of iron. The Gifford-Wood Company was a major supplier to the ice industry, and to a number of manufacturing industries. This reprint is actually only the pages on ice harvesting equipment, taken from a Gifford-Wood catalog of 480 pages. The catalog also purveyed coal elevating and conveying machinery, general elevating and conveying machinery, and sheet and structural steel work. The catalog itself does not carry any date, but a copy of Revised Price Lists Applying to Gifford-Wood Co.’s Catalog No. 18 came inserted into the front of the catalog. The Revised Price Lists carries the note, “In Effect January 1, 1919.” Unfortunately, the prices that were revised were for riveted pintle chains, attachments for same, sprockets, rubber belting, and other items for conveying equipment, so we are unable to include the prices of the ice harvesting machinery and tools portrayed in this reprint. But there is so much more than just the machinery and tools. We have included all the two dozen or so photographs in the section showing Gifford-Wood machinery and tools being used in actual ice harvesting operations. PLUS, we have included eleven photos from the very beginning of the catalog, variouss view of the Gifford-Wood manufacturing and storage facilities in Hudson, New York. To be exact: the back of the title page, which is an artist’s aerial view of the Gifford-Wood facilities; Page 5, with a photo of the carpenter and pattern shops, and another of the foundry; Page 6, with a photo of the south bay of the machine shop, and another of the north bay of the machine shop; Page 7, with a photo of the steel shop, and another of the forge shop; Page 8, with a photo of the rough grinding room, and another of the fine grinding room; Page 11, with a photo of the stock room for ice tools and harvesting machinery, and another of the yard storage. Then there are pages and pages of: power field saws incline elevators various types of conveyors sleigh and wagon loaders Basin saws ice elevators elevating and lowering machines icing stations gigs snow and ice planers, scrapers, and plows high grade markers hand plows levelers hand saws grapples bars and chisels scoops augers hooks tongs axes and hatchets awls and chippers scales hand shavers and breakers Cresey (power) ice breakers runs and skids. We are pleased to make this reprint available to those interested in the general industrial history of our nation, and to enthusiasts of the long departed and nearly forgotten industry of natural ice harvesting. So far as we know, this is the first catalog reprint of ice harvesting equipment to be made available since Phil Whitney’s of around a two decades ago. Please note that this is a photoduplicated reproduction of the 1919 original. The accompanying images were scanned from a reprint, not the original.
Price: 11.98 USD
Location: Mebane, North Carolina
End Time: 2023-12-10T16:57:26.000Z
Shipping Cost: 5.65 USD
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