Excellent Veritasium video on the 19th century ice industry. Shipping ice from America to India would hardly seem like a wise idea—it’s hard to imagine ever getting a committee to approve such a venture—but entrepreneurs are free to try wacky ideas all the time, and sometimes they pay off, resulting in great riches. That’s the story of the “Ice King,” Frederic Tudor, who lost money for years before figuring out the insulation and logistics needed to make the trade profitable.

What I hadn’t fully appreciated is how the ice trade reshaped shipping, diet, and city design before the invention of mechanical refrigeration. Ice created the cold chain, and the cold chain made it possible to move fresh meat, fish, and produce over long distances. That in turn enabled cities to grow far beyond what local agriculture could support and shifted the American diet from salted and smoked provisions toward fresh food.

The profits of the ice trade encouraged investment in artificial ice which initially was met with resistance—natural ice is created by God!—a classic example of incumbents wrapping their economic interests in moral language, a pattern we see repeated with every disruptive technology from margarine to ridesharing.

Lots of lessons in the video about option value, permissionless innovation, and creative destruction. New technologies destroy old industries and create new ones that no one could have foreseen. The moral panic over artificial ice replacing the natural kind is no doubt familiar.

Hat tip: Naveen Nvn