As early as 1805, Bostonian Frederic Tudor considered ways to make money by exporting ice, a valueless commodity in New England, to the tropics. Tudor supported technical innovations, like the horse-drawn sleigh with saw-like runners shown in this illustration, which improved the cutting, shipping and storage of large ice blocks. Recognizing that people living in warm climates were not familiar with cool food and drinks, Tudor traveled to prospective markets making ice cream and providing free ice for barkeepers. By 1856, Tudor’s role as the ‘Ice King’ was firmly established as 146,000 tons of ice shipped from Boston transformed the eating habits of people from the Philippines to the southern United States.
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