Chapter 1Winter in SummerKing James I of England and Scotland chose a very warm day in the summer of 1620 for Cornelis Drebbel's newest demonstration and decreed that it be held in the Great Hall of Westminster Abbey. Drebbel had promised to delight the king by making the atmosphere of some building cold enough in summer to mimic the dead of winter, and by choosing the Great Hall the king gave him an enormous challenge, the largest interior space in the British Isles, 332 feet from one end to the other and 102 feet from the floor to the golden bosses of its vaulted white ceiling. In 1620 most people considered the likelihood of reversing the seasons inside a building impossible, and many deemed it sacrilege, an attempt to contravene the natural order, to twist the configuration of the world established by God. Early- seventeenth-century Britons and Europeans construed cold only as a facet of nature in winter. Some believed cold had an origin point, far to the north; the most fanciful maps represented Thule, a near- mythical island thought to exist six days' sailing north of the northern end of Britain and supposedly visited only once, by Pytheas in the fourth century B.C. -- an unexplored, unknown country of permanent cold. Not until the end of the nineteenth century would a true locus of the cold become a more real destination, as Victorian scientists tried to reach absolute zero, a point they sometimes called "Ultima Thule." Likening themselves to contemporary explorers of the uncharted Arctic and Antarctic regions, these laboratory scientists sought a goal so intense, so horrific, yet so marvelous in its ability to transform all matter that in comparison ice was warm. In the early seventeenth century, even ordinary winter cold was forbidding enough that the imagination failed when trying to grapple with it. "Natural philosophers" could conceive technological feats that would not be accomplished until hundreds of years later -- heavier-than-air flight, ultrarapid ground transportation, the prolongation of life through better medicines, even the construction of skyscrapers and the use of robots -- but not a single human being envisioned a society able to utilize intense cold to advantage. Perhaps this was because while the sources of heat were obvious -- the sun, the crackle of a fire, the life force of animals and human beings -- cold was a mystery without an obvious source, a chill associated with death, inexplicable, too fearsome to investigate. Abhorrence of cold was reflected in only sporadic use made of natural refrigeration, an omission that permitted a large percentage of harvested grains, meats, dairy products, vegetables, fruits, and fish to spoil or rot before humans could eat them. And since natural refrigeration was so underutilized, producing refrigeration by artificial means was considered a preposterous idea. No fabulist in 1620 could conceive that there could ever be a connection between artificial cold and imp Excerpted from Absolute Zero: And the Conquest of Cold by Tom Shachtman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
