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The Old Story of John Gorrie, and the One You Never Knew. | WFSU Local Routes (2024)
Most of us know Dr. John Gorrie as the father of refrigeration. But there is surprisingly little other information about him out in the public sphere. And some of what is thought to be known is contradictory. According to the book The Fever Man, Gorrie claimed to have been born to the mistress of a Spanish royal on the Isle of Nevis, in the Caribbean. But 1840 Franklin County Census records list Charleston, South Carolina as his birthplace in 1804, and that he was of Scotts-Irish descent. The Statuary Hall website in the United States Capitol lists his birth date as 1802, while his gravestone is etched with an 1803 birth date. He grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, and attended the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of the State of New York beginning in 1825. He completed a three-year curriculum in 2 years and his intellect was highly admired by his teachers. By 1828 he had returned to South Carolina and started a medical practice in Abbeville.
Dr. Gorrie Comes to Town
1833 was the year Dr. Gorrie arrived in Apalachicola. It’s unknown if this was by design, or if he’d just run out of river. He had traveled south by riverboat from Columbus, Georgia, down the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers, stopping at towns along the way. In 1833 Apalachicola was an outpost of world commerce in the middle of an untamed wilderness. Cotton coming downriver, out to the northeast, and all of Europe. Finished goods came in from Europe and the Caribbean, then headed upriver to the interior. Ownership of the land the town was situated on was still in a dispute related to the Forbes Purchase and would not be decided by the Supreme Court for another two years. Apalachicola had antebellum gentility, coexisting with a dirty, bug-infested, rough and swampy waterfront.
In May of 1838, the good doctor married Caroline (Myrick) Beman, the new owner of the Florida Hotel in Apalachicola. She was a widow from Georgia, but she had Myrick family relatives in Apalachicola and her father had large agricultural landholdings inland. The Florida Hotel stood approximately where the Fort Coombs Armory building sits today. Together, the Gorries had two children, a son, also named John, and a daughter, Sarah. John, Jr. later fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and then served as a state senator from Marianna from 1865-66. He died in a carriage accident on his way to Tallahassee for a legislative session.
Yellow Fever is the Father of Invention
Yellow fever outbreaks in the summer months set Gorrie on his path to inventing artificial refrigeration. The medical consensus at the time associated the saffron scourge with summer heat, not the disease-carrying mosquito. Profit was not Gorrie’s motivation, he sought to ease the suffering of his patients. After years of experimentation, Gorrie was awarded patent no. 8080 in 1851 for his Improved Process For The Artificial Production Of Ice. Unfortunately for Gorrie and the rest of the world, the northern ice syndicate, which controlled the ice trade, didn’t share his philanthropic enthusiasm. They saw his invention as a threat to their money-making cartel and set out to discredit Dr. Gorrie, attacking him in the press. It would take a Civil War and naval blockade preventing the delivery of northern ice to bring artificial ice production to the south. Once there, the frozen genie was out of the bottle.
Death of the Doctor
Dr. John Gorrie died on June 29, 1855. He had just returned from New Orleans when he fell ill and the cause of his death is unknown. It is often stated that he died a broken and defeated man because he couldn’t get the world to take his ice-making machine seriously. But he was far from broke. He and Caroline had landholdings and they had prospered during their time together. A monument to Dr. John Gorrie was erected in 1899, in front of the Episcopal church in Apalachicola. It was sponsored by the Southern Ice Exchange; they had profited from his invention and wanted to express their gratitude for his work. The only widely known image of Dr. Gorrie is a portrait painted by artist Charles Foster, commissioned by his granddaughter, long after his death. Reportedly, the artist was working from a daguerreotype taken of the doctor.
Mike Plummer is a content producer and editor for television at WFSU Public Media. He spent 25 years in commercial television as an art director, commercial director, promotion manager, station manager and creative services director before coming to WFSU in 2008. Mike likes to find the “unusual” or “out of the ordinary” stories in our Local Routes. He says the best part of his job is getting to know people he would otherwise probably not get a chance to meet. Mike is widowed, has a rescue dog named Dexter, and is constantly at war with the vines growing in his backyard.
Well, John Gorrie, within this area or state of Florida, is known as the inventor of the ice machine or the cooling process of ice machines. That is which is what he was known to do. He came here from South Carolina in 1833.
Dr. Gorrie invented the ice-making machine and is considered the father of air conditioning and refrigeration. Gorrie's invention began with an attempt to cure Yellow Fever during an outbreak in Apalachicola in 1841. Convinced that cold was a healer, he advocated the use of ice to cool sickrooms and reduce fever.
Dr. Gorrie's basic principle is the one most often used in refrigeration today; namely, cooling caused by the rapid expansion of gases. Using two double acting force pumps he first condensed and then rarified air.
He received his medical education at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of New York in Fairfield, New York. In 1833, he moved to Apalachicola, Florida, a port city on the Gulf coast. As well as being resident physician at two hospitals, Gorrie was active in the community.
Florida would not be what it is today without air conditioning. Dr.John Gorrie is considered the father of air conditioning and refrigeration. He was also a physician, scientist, inventor, and humanitarian.
Gravestone for John Gorrie (1802-1855) located at the John Gorrie Memorial in Apalachicola, Florida. Gorrie invented the first mechanical ice machine and was an early researcher on refrigeration and air conditioning.
Gorrie married Mrs.Caroline Frances Beman. Two children, a son, John Myrick Gorrie, and a daughter, Sarah, were born of this union. The son, said to have been educated as a lawyer and interested in politics, served in the Confederate army and died at the age of twenty-six in 1866.
South Floridians relied primarily on a building's architecture to provide defense against the heat. Addison Mizner was the famous South Florida architect known for his ability to turn a Spanish-style home inside out and create the proper ventilation necessary to endure the Florida heat and humidity before A/C.
The first ever patent for an Ice Machine was granted to John Gorrie in 1851 after he had perfected his 1842 invention of a system that was able to chill water to produce ice.
For millennia, those rich enough got servants to gather snow and ice formed during the winter and stored it in straw-lined underground pits called 'ice houses'.
In 1853, Alexander Twining was awarded U.S. Patent 10221 for an icemaker. Twining's experiments led to the development of the first commercial refrigeration system, built in 1856. He also established the first artificial method of producing ice.
Scotsman Ice Systems invented the first nugget ice maker in 1981. Sonic popularized the shape by plopping this ice into its soft drinks, and people loved it so much that they would purchase bags of ice from the drive-through restaurant to take home.
Gotti was one of five brothers who became made men in the Gambino crime family: Eugene "Gene" Gotti was initiated before John due to the latter's incarceration, Peter Gotti was initiated under John's leadership in 1988, and Richard V. Gotti was identified as a caporegime (captain, or head of a "crew") by 2002.
A 30-year-old physician from South Carolina, Dr. John Gorrie arrived in Apalachicola in 1833. He was the pioneer in the invention of refrigeration , air conditioning, and artificial manufacture of ice.
In 1902, Willis Carrier submitted his design for the first modern air-conditioning system, accomplishing a feat that was once thought to be impossible – control of the indoor environment.
Dr.John Gorrie (1803 - 1855), an early pioneer in the invention of the artificial manufacture of ice, refrigeration, and air conditioning, was granted the first U.S. Patent for mechanical refrigeration in 1851.
John Gorrie is a marble sculpture depicting the American inventor and scientist of the same name by C. Adrian Pillars, installed at the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall, in Washington, D.C., as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection. The statue was gifted by the U.S. state of Florida in 1914.
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