Frederick William Wolf Jr.
Frederick William Wolf Jr. was an American engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur. He is best known for inventing the modern electric refrigerator in 1913, an innovation that significantly contributed to the development of household refrigeration technology in the early 20th century.
In the year 1916, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Woodrow Wilson.
Early Life and Education
Frederick or Fred as he was known by his family and friends was born to an Irish-American family on 23 March 1879 in the small town of Fort Wayne,Indiana.His father,Frederick Sr. was a refrigeration engineer while his mother Helen was a teacher.From childhood he showed an incline towards refrigeration engineering.He was known to be an avid fan of automobiles.At age 19,he decided to work for his father as he was interested in the possibilities of applying mechanical refrigeration systems at merchant outlets and homes.Creation of DOMELRE and Later Life
By the age of 32,he had moved to Chicago and was working for the General Electric company while simultaneously being a member of the American Society of Refrigerating Engineers. In 1913, he along with co-worker Frederick Heiderman designed an electrical unit that could be used to cool on the principles of the cooling device built by John Gorrie. It became known as DOMELRE.Domelre became an instant sensation and Fred and his colleagues started the Mechanical Refrigeration company in Chicago..They sold more than 300 units in the opening week which made it the most commercially successful product of its time.DOMELRE refrigerator c. 1914
DOMELRE was credited as the first domestic electrical refrigerator in the history of domestic Refrigeration. Fred sold the rights of DOMELRE to Henry Joy of the Packard motor car company and retired peacefully. He died in 1954.,DOMELRE has been described as "revolutionary",in the history of domestic refrigeration. It has been described as the "first domestic refrigerator", the "first household refrigerator", the "first electrical refrigerator", the "first successful, mass marketed package automatic electric refrigeration unit", "the first plug-in refrigeration unit", "the first mass-produced small refrigeration system", "the first electric household refrigerator to survive its infancy" or just as "the domestic electric refrigerator".
According to ASHRAE, DOMELRE contained a number of innovations not found in prior domestic refrigerators, such as offering automatic temperature control by thermostat, an air cooled condenser that did not require water, and not the least, it also introduced a freezing tray for ice cubes.
A 2005 assessment of the history of the ice delivery business in the New York Times concluded that the technology that DOMELRE pioneered gradually led to the end of that business in New York by 1950.