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Post by emmaatkins on Feb 14, 2023 13:44:46 GMT
Hi there, I'm a PhD student researching whether food waste was factored into fridge design. I was hoping you could help with a query about a General Electric model from the 1950s that featured rotating shelves - see advert below. I was wondering if someone would be able to help me find out why these models ceased production. In the book 'Refrigeration: A History' (2015), Carroll Gantz says that these models stopped being produced because children would spin the shelves so fast that items would fly off them. However he does not cite a source for this claim. Is there any material that could corroborate this or give another account of why they did not make it to present day fridges? Many thanks!
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marko
7 Cubic Foot
Posts: 144
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Post by marko on Feb 14, 2023 19:45:32 GMT
Well now, that is an interesting subject. While I do not know why that "lazy Susan" design was discontinued, I can speculate that perhaps the rotary shelves were not robust enough for long term service. If kids flying the food off the shelves was a major problem, it would seem to be a relatively minor engineering challenge to make a damper to prevent spinning the shelf, as opposed to simply turning it, but the extra cost involved may have "shelved" the whole idea, so to speak.
I think that most would agree that mechanical refrigeration itself cuts down on food waste, but if they made refrigerators that were only 12 or 15 inches deep, that would be the kind I would buy for my wife, that way nothing could be shoved to the back and forgotten about, or experiments in "cold fusion" would at least be minimized.
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