The following is a

timeline A timeline is a display of a list of events in chronological order. It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with dates paralleling it, and usually contemporaneous events. Timelines can use any suitable scale represen ...

of low-temperature technology and cryogenic technology (

refrigeration The term refrigeration refers to the process of removing heat from an enclosed space or substance for the purpose of lowering the temperature.International Dictionary of Refrigeration, http://dictionary.iifiir.org/search.phpASHRAE Terminology, ht ...

down to –273.15 °C, –459.67 °F or 0 K). It also lists important milestones in

thermometry Temperature measurement (also known as thermometry) describes the process of measuring a current local temperature for immediate or later evaluation. Datasets consisting of repeated standardized measurements can be used to assess temperature tren ...

thermodynamics Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is governed by the four laws of th ...

statistical physics Statistical physics is a branch of physics that evolved from a foundation of statistical mechanics, which uses methods of probability theory and statistics, and particularly the mathematical tools for dealing with large populations and approxim ...

and

calorimetry In chemistry and thermodynamics, calorimetry () is the science or act of measuring changes in ''state variables'' of a body for the purpose of deriving the heat transfer associated with changes of its state due, for example, to chemical reac ...

, that were crucial in development of low temperature systems.

Prior to the 19th century

* –

Zimri-Lim __NOTOC__ Zimri-Lim (Akkadian: ''Zi-im-ri Li-im'') was king of Mari c. 1775–1761 BCE. Zimri-Lim was the son or grandson of Iakhdunlim, but was forced to flee to Yamhad when his father was assassinated by his own servants during a coup. He ha ...

, ruler of Mari in Syria commanded the construction of one of the first ice houses near the

Euphrates The Euphrates () is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia ( ''the land between the rivers''). Originating in Turkey, the Eup ...

. * – The yakhchal (meaning "ice pit" in Persian) is an ancient Persian type of refrigerator. The structure was formed from a mortar resistant to heat transmission, in the shape of a dome. Snow and ice was stored beneath the ground, effectively allowing access to ice even in hot months and allowing for prolonged food preservation. Often a badgir was coupled with the yakhchal in order to slow the heat loss. Modern refrigerators are still called yakhchal in Persian. * -

Hero of Alexandria Hero of Alexandria (; grc-gre, Ἥρων ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς, ''Heron ho Alexandreus'', also known as Heron of Alexandria ; 60 AD) was a Greek mathematician and engineer who was active in his native city of Alexandria, Roman Egypt. He ...

knew of the principle that certain substances, notably air, expand and contract and described a demonstration in which a closed tube partially filled with air had its end in a container of water. The expansion and contraction of the air caused the position of the water/air interface to move along the tube. This was the first established principle of gas behaviour vs temperature, and principle of first thermometers later on. The idea could predate him even more (

Empedocles Empedocles (; grc-gre, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς; , 444–443 BC) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a native citizen of Akragas, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for originating the cosmogonic theory of the ...

of Agrigentum in his 460 B.C. book On Nature). * 1396 AD - Ice storage warehouses called "Dong-bing-go-tango" (meaning "east ice storage warehouse" in Korean) and Seo-bing-go ("west ice storage warehouse") were built in Han-Yang (currently Seoul, Korea). The buildings housed ice that was collected from the frozen Han River in January (by lunar calendar). The warehouse was well-insulated, providing the royal families with ice into the summer months. These warehouses were closed in 1898 AD but the buildings are still intact in Seoul. * 1593 –

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He wa ...

builds a first modern

thermoscope A thermoscope is a device that shows changes in temperature. A typical design is a tube in which a liquid rises and falls as the temperature changes. The modern thermometer gradually evolved from it with the addition of a scale in the early 17th c ...

. But it is possible the invention was by Santorio Santorio or independently around same time by Cornelis Drebbel. The principle of operation was known in

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of Classical Antiquity, classical antiquity ( AD 600), th ...

. * -1613 – Francesco Sagredo or Santorio Santorio, put a numerical scale on a thermoscope. * 1617 – Giuseppe Biancani publishes first clear diagram of thermoscope * 1638 –

Robert Fludd Robert Fludd, also known as Robertus de Fluctibus (17 January 1574 – 8 September 1637), was a prominent English Paracelsian physician with both scientific and occult interests. He is remembered as an astrologer, mathematician, cosmologis ...

describes thermometer with a scale, using air thermometer principle with column of air and liquid water. * 1650 – Otto von Guericke designed and built the world's first

vacuum pump A vacuum pump is a device that draws gas molecules from a sealed volume in order to leave behind a partial vacuum. The job of a vacuum pump is to generate a relative vacuum within a capacity. The first vacuum pump was invented in 1650 by Otto ...

and created the world's first ever

vacuum A vacuum is a space devoid of matter. The word is derived from the Latin adjective ''vacuus'' for "vacant" or " void". An approximation to such vacuum is a region with a gaseous pressure much less than atmospheric pressure. Physicists often di ...

known as the

Magdeburg hemispheres The Magdeburg hemispheres are a pair of large copper hemispheres, with mating rims. They were used to demonstrate the power of atmospheric pressure. When the rims were sealed with grease and the air was pumped out, the sphere contained a vacuum a ...

to disprove

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...

's long-held supposition that ' Nature abhors a vacuum'. * 1656 –

Robert Boyle Robert Boyle (; 25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, alchemist and inventor. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of ...

and Robert Hooke built an

air pump An air pump is a pump for pushing air. Examples include a bicycle pump, pumps that are used to aerate an aquarium or a pond via an airstone; a gas compressor used to power a pneumatic tool, air horn or pipe organ; a bellows used to encoura ...

on this design. * 1662 –

Boyle's law Boyle's law, also referred to as the Boyle–Mariotte law, or Mariotte's law (especially in France), is an experimental gas law that describes the relationship between pressure and volume of a confined gas. Boyle's law has been stated as: The ...

(gas law relating pressure and volume) is demonstrated using a

* 1665 – Boyle theorizes a minimum temperature in ''New Experiments and Observations touching Cold''. * 1679 –

Denis Papin Denis Papin FRS (; 22 August 1647 – 26 August 1713) was a French physicist, mathematician and inventor, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the pressure cooker and of the steam engine. Early ...

–

safety valve A safety valve is a valve that acts as a fail-safe. An example of safety valve is a pressure relief valve (PRV), which automatically releases a substance from a boiler, pressure vessel, or other system, when the pressure or temperature exceeds ...

* 1702 –

Guillaume Amontons Guillaume Amontons (31 August 1663 – 11 October 1705) was a French scientific instrument inventor and physicist. He was one of the pioneers in studying the problem of friction, which is the resistance to motion when bodies make contact. He is ...

first calculates absolute zero to be −240 °C using an air thermometer of his own invention (1702), theorizing at this point the gas would reach zero volume and zero pressure. * 1714 – Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the first reliable thermometer, using mercury instead of alcohol and water mixtures * 1724 – Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit proposes a Fahrenheit scale, which had finer scale and greater reproducibility than competitors. * 1730 – René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur invented an alcohol thermometer and temperature scale ultimately proved to be less reliable than Fahrenheit's mercury thermometer. * 1742 –

Anders Celsius Anders Celsius (; 27 November 170125 April 1744) was a Swedish astronomer, physicist and mathematician. He was professor of astronomy at Uppsala University from 1730 to 1744, but traveled from 1732 to 1735 visiting notable observatories in Germ ...

proposed a scale with zero at the boiling point and 100 degrees at the freezing point of water. It was later changed to be the other way around, on the input from Swedish academy of science. * 1755 -

William Cullen William Cullen FRS FRSE FRCPE FPSG (; 15 April 17105 February 1790) was a Scottish physician, chemist and agriculturalist, and professor at the Edinburgh Medical School. Cullen was a central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment: He was ...

used a pump to create a partial

over a container of

diethyl ether Diethyl ether, or simply ether, is an organic compound in the ether class with the formula , sometimes abbreviated as (see Pseudoelement symbols). It is a colourless, highly volatile, sweet-smelling ("ethereal odour"), extremely flammable li ...

, which then

boiled Boiling is the rapid vaporization of a liquid, which occurs when a liquid is heated to its boiling point, the temperature at which the vapour pressure of the liquid is equal to the pressure exerted on the liquid by the surrounding atmosphere. T ...

, absorbing

heat In thermodynamics, heat is defined as the form of energy crossing the boundary of a thermodynamic system by virtue of a temperature difference across the boundary. A thermodynamic system does not ''contain'' heat. Nevertheless, the term is ...

from the surrounding air. * 1756 – The first documented public demonstration of artificial

* 1782 –

Antoine Lavoisier Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier ( , ; ; 26 August 17438 May 1794),
CNRS (

Pierre-Simon Laplace Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (; ; 23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French scholar and polymath whose work was important to the development of engineering, mathematics, statistics, physics, astronomy, and philosophy. He summarized ...

invent the ice-calorimeter * 1784 –

Gaspard Monge Gaspard Monge, Comte de Péluse (9 May 1746 – 28 July 1818) was a French mathematician, commonly presented as the inventor of descriptive geometry, (the mathematical basis of) technical drawing, and the father of differential geometry. During ...

liquefied the first gas producing liquid sulfur dioxide. * 1787 –

Charles's law Charles's law (also known as the law of volumes) is an experimental gas law that describes how gases tend to expand when heated. A modern statement of Charles's law is: When the pressure on a sample of a dry gas is held constant, the Kelvin t ...

(Gas law, relating volume and temperature)

19th century

* 1802 – John Dalton wrote "the reducibility of all elastic fluids of whatever kind, into liquids" * 1802 – Gay-Lussac's law (Gas law, relating temperature and pressure). * 1803 – Domestic

ice box An icebox (also called a cold closet) is a compact non-mechanical refrigerator which was a common early-twentieth-century kitchen appliance before the development of safely powered refrigeration devices. Before the development of electric refrig ...

* 1803 – Thomas Moore of Baltimore, Md. received a patent on refrigeration. * 1805 –

Oliver Evans Oliver Evans (September 13, 1755 – April 15, 1819) was an American inventor, engineer and businessman born in rural Delaware and later rooted commercially in Philadelphia. He was one of the first Americans building steam engines and an advoca ...

designed the first closed circuit refrigeration machine based on the

vapor-compression refrigeration Vapour-compression refrigeration or vapor-compression refrigeration system (VCRS), in which the refrigerant undergoes phase changes, is one of the many refrigeration cycles and is the most widely used method for air conditioning of buildings ...

cycle. * 1809 –

Jacob Perkins Jacob Perkins (9 July 1766 – 30 July 1849) was an American inventor, mechanical engineer and physicist. Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, Perkins was apprenticed to a goldsmith. He soon made himself known with a variety of useful mechanical i ...

patented the first refrigerating machine * 1810 – John Leslie freezes

water Water (chemical formula ) is an Inorganic compound, inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living ...

to ice by using an airpump. * 1811 –

Avogadro's law Avogadro's law (sometimes referred to as Avogadro's hypothesis or Avogadro's principle) or Avogadro-Ampère's hypothesis is an experimental gas law relating the volume of a gas to the amount of substance of gas present. The law is a specific c ...

a gas law * 1823 –

Michael Faraday Michael Faraday (; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic inducti ...

liquified ammonia to cause cooling * 1824 – Sadi Carnot – the

Carnot Cycle A Carnot cycle is an ideal thermodynamic cycle proposed by French physicist Sadi Carnot in 1824 and expanded upon by others in the 1830s and 1840s. By Carnot's theorem, it provides an upper limit on the efficiency of any classical thermodynam ...

* 1834 –

Ideal gas law The ideal gas law, also called the general gas equation, is the equation of state of a hypothetical ideal gas. It is a good approximation of the behavior of many gases under many conditions, although it has several limitations. It was first stat ...

by Émile Clapeyron * 1834 – Émile Clapeyron characterizes phase transitions between two phases in form of Clausius–Clapeyron relation. * 1834 –

obtained the first patent for a

system. * 1834 – Jean-Charles Peltier discovers the

Peltier effect The thermoelectric effect is the direct conversion of temperature differences to electric voltage and vice versa via a thermocouple. A thermoelectric device creates a voltage when there is a different temperature on each side. Conversely, when ...

* 1844 –

Charles Piazzi Smyth Charles Piazzi Smyth (3 January 1819 – 21 February 1900) was an Italian-born British astronomer who was Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1846 to 1888; he is known for many innovations in astronomy and, along with his wife Jessica Duncan P ...

proposes comfort cooling * c.1850 –

makes a hypothesis that freezing substances increases their dielectric constant. * 1851 –

John Gorrie John B. Gorrie (October 3, 1803 – June 29, 1855) was a Nevisian-born American physician and scientist, credited as the inventor of mechanical refrigeration. Early life Born on the Island of Nevis in the Leeward Islands of the West Indies t ...

patented his mechanical refrigeration machine in the US to make ice to cool the air * 1852 –

James Prescott Joule James Prescott Joule (; 24 December 1818 11 October 1889) was an English physicist, mathematician and brewer, born in Salford, Lancashire. Joule studied the nature of heat, and discovered its relationship to mechanical work (see energy). ...

and

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, (26 June 182417 December 1907) was a British mathematician, Mathematical physics, mathematical physicist and engineer born in Belfast. Professor of Natural Philosophy (Glasgow), Professor of Natural Philoso ...

discover Joule–Thomson effect * 1856 – James Harrison patented an ether liquid-vapour compression refrigeration system and developed the first practical ice-making and refrigeration room for use in the brewing and meat-packing industries of Geelong, Victoria, Australia. * 1856 –

August Krönig August Karl Krönig (; 20 September 1822 – 5 June 1879) was a German chemist and physicist who published an account of the kinetic theory of gases in 1856, probably after reading a paper by John James Waterston. Biography Krönig was born i ...

simplistic foundation of kinetic theory of gases. * 1857 –

Rudolf Clausius Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius (; 2 January 1822 – 24 August 1888) was a German physicist and mathematician and is considered one of the central founding fathers of the science of thermodynamics. By his restatement of Sadi Carnot's principle ...

creates a sophisticated theory of gases based including all degrees of freedom, as well derives Clausius–Clapeyron relation from basic principles. * 1857 –

Carl Wilhelm Siemens Sir Carl Wilhelm Siemens (4 April 1823 – 19 November 1883), anglicised to Charles William Siemens, was a German-British electrical engineer and businessman. Biography Siemens was born in the village of Lenthe, today part of Gehrden, near Ha ...

, the Siemens cycle * 1858 –

Julius Plücker Julius Plücker (16 June 1801 – 22 May 1868) was a German mathematician and physicist. He made fundamental contributions to the field of analytical geometry and was a pioneer in the investigations of cathode rays that led eventually to the dis ...

observed for the first time some pumping effect due to electrical discharge. * 1859 –

James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and li ...

determines distribution of velocities and kinetic energies in a gas, and explains emergent property of temperature and heat, and creates a first law of statistical mechanics. * 1859 –

Ferdinand Carré Ferdinand Philippe Edouard Carré (11 March 1824 – 11 January 1900) was a French engineer, born at Moislains (Somme) on 11 March 1824. Carré is best known as the inventor of refrigeration equipment used to produce ice. He died on 11 January 19 ...

– The first gas absorption refrigeration system using gaseous ammonia dissolved in water (referred to as "aqua ammonia") * 1862 – Alexander Carnegie Kirk invents the

Air cycle machine An air cycle machine (ACM) is the refrigeration unit of the environmental control system (ECS) used in pressurized gas turbine-powered aircraft. Normally an aircraft has two or three of these ACM. Each ACM and its components are often referred as ...

* 1864 – Charles Tellier patented a refrigeration system using dimethyl ether * 1867 - Thaddeus S. C. Lowe patented a refrigeration system using

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide ( chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is trans ...

, and in 1869 made ice making machine using dry carbon dioxide. The same year Lowe bought a steamship and put a compressor based refrigeration device on it for transport of frozen meat. * 1867 — French immigrant Eugene Dominic Nicolle dissolved

ammonia Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous wa ...

to reach a temperature of -20ºC in a sealed room. Together with another new Australian, industrialist Sir Thomas Mort — who in 1867 built the first freezerworks using this idea in Balmain — and with the help of NSW politician, Augustus Morris, overcame the public's mistrust of frozen food by revealing the fact to an audience of the influential (after their state meal) on 2 September, 1875. * 1869 – Charles Tellier installed a cold storage plant in France. * 1869 –

Thomas Andrews Thomas Andrews Jr. (7 February 1873 – 15 April 1912) was a British businessman and shipbuilder. He was managing director and head of the drafting department of the shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff in Belfast, Ireland. He was the nava ...

discovers existence of a critical point in fluids. * 1871 –

Carl von Linde Carl Paul Gottfried von Linde (11 June 1842 – 16 November 1934) was a German scientist, engineer, and businessman. He discovered a refrigeration cycle and invented the first industrial-scale air separation and gas liquefaction processes, whi ...

built his first

compression machine. * c.a. 1873 – Van der Waals publishes and proposes a

real gas Real gases are nonideal gases whose molecules occupy space and have interactions; consequently, they do not adhere to the ideal gas law. To understand the behaviour of real gases, the following must be taken into account: *compressibility effect ...

model named later a

Van der Waals equation In chemistry and thermodynamics, the Van der Waals equation (or Van der Waals equation of state) is an equation of state which extends the ideal gas law to include the effects of interaction between molecules of a gas, as well as accounting for ...

. * 1875 - Raoul Pictet develops a refrigeration machine using sulphur dioxide to combat high-pressure problems of ammonia in when used in tropical climates (mainly for the purpose of shipping meat). * 1876 –

patented equipment to liquefy air using the Joule Thomson expansion process and regenerative cooling * 1877 – Raoul Pictet and Louis Paul Cailletet, working separately, develop two methods to liquefy

oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as ...

. * 1879 – Bell-Coleman machine * 1882 –

William Soltau Davidson William Soltau Davidson (15 June 1846 – 17 July 1924) was the New Zealand pioneer of refrigerated shipping. Early life Son of Frances Pillans and bank manager David Davidson, William Davidson was born in Montreal, Canada. He attended the Edi ...

fitted a compression refrigeration unit to the New Zealand vessel ''Dunedin'' * 1883 –

Zygmunt Wróblewski Zygmunt, Zigmunt, Zigmund and spelling variations thereof are masculine given names and occasionally surnames. People so named include: Given name Medieval period * Sigismund I the Old (1467–1548), Zygmunt I Stary in Polish, King of Poland and Gr ...

condenses experimentally useful quantities of

liquid oxygen Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is the liquid form of molecular oxygen. It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an app ...

* 1885 –

published hydrogen's critical temperature as 33 K; critical pressure, 13.3 atmospheres; and boiling point, 23 K. * 1888 – Loftus Perkins develops the "

Arktos In Ancient Greek mythology, Arktos (also written as Arctus) was a centaur who fought against the Lapith spearmen. It may also refer to 'bears' in Greek. Mythology Arktos is briefly mentioned in Hesiod, Shield of Heracles 178 ff (trans. Evely ...

" cold chamber for preserving food, using an early ammonia absorption system. * 1892 –

James Dewar Sir James Dewar (20 September 1842 – 27 March 1923) was a British chemist and physicist. He is best known for his invention of the vacuum flask, which he used in conjunction with research into the liquefaction of gases. He also studied a ...

invents the vacuum-insulated, silver-plated glass

Dewar flask A vacuum flask (also known as a Dewar flask, Dewar bottle or thermos) is an insulating storage vessel that greatly lengthens the time over which its contents remain hotter or cooler than the flask's surroundings. Invented by Sir James Dew ...

* 1895 –

files for

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

protection of the

Hampson–Linde cycle The Hampson–Linde cycle is a process for the liquefaction of gases, especially for air separation. William Hampson and Carl von Linde independently filed for patents of the cycle in 1895: Hampson on 23 May 1895 and Linde on 5 June 1895. The Ha ...

for liquefaction of atmospheric air or other gases (approved in 1903). * 1898 – James Dewar condenses

liquid hydrogen Liquid hydrogen (LH2 or LH2) is the liquid state of the element hydrogen. Hydrogen is found naturally in the molecular H2 form. To exist as a liquid, H2 must be cooled below its critical point of 33 K. However, for it to be in a fully l ...

by using regenerative cooling and his invention, the

vacuum flask A vacuum flask (also known as a Dewar flask, Dewar bottle or thermos) is an insulating storage vessel that greatly lengthens the time over which its contents remain hotter or cooler than the flask's surroundings. Invented by Sir James Dewa ...

20th century

* 1905 –

obtains pure liquid

and

nitrogen Nitrogen is the chemical element with the symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a nonmetal and the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table, often called the pnictogens. It is a common element in the universe, estimated at se ...

. * 1906 –

Willis Carrier Willis Haviland Carrier (November 26, 1876 – October 7, 1950) was an American engineer, best known for inventing modern air conditioning. Carrier invented the first electrical air conditioning unit in 1902. In 1915, he founded Carrier Cor ...

patents the basis for modern

air conditioning Air conditioning, often abbreviated as A/C or AC, is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior environment (sometimes referred to as 'comfort cooling') and in some cases also strictly controlling ...

. * 1908 –

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (21 September 1853 – 21 February 1926) was a Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate. He exploited the Hampson–Linde cycle to investigate how materials behave when cooled to nearly absolute zero and later to liquefy heliu ...

liquifies

helium Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. ...

. * 1911 – Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discloses his research on metallic low-temperature phenomenon characterised by no electrical resistance, calling it superconductivity. * 1915 – Wolfgang Gaede – the

Diffusion pump Diffusion pumps use a high speed jet of vapor to direct gas molecules in the pump throat down into the bottom of the pump and out the exhaust. They were the first type of high vacuum pumps operating in the regime of free molecular flow, where the ...

* 1920 – Edmund Copeland and Harry Edwards use iso-butane in small refrigerators. * 1922 – Baltzar von Platen and Carl Munters invent the 3 fluids absorption chiller, exclusively driven by heat. * 1924 – Fernand Holweck – the

Holweck pump A molecular drag pump is a type of vacuum pump that utilizes the drag of air molecules against a rotating surface. The most common sub-type is the ''Holweck pump'', which contains a rotating cylinder with spiral grooves which direct the gas from the ...

* 1926 –

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

and

Leó Szilárd Leo Szilard (; hu, Szilárd Leó, pronounced ; born Leó Spitz; February 11, 1898 – May 30, 1964) was a Hungarian-German-American physicist and inventor. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, patented the idea of a nuclear ...

invent the

Einstein refrigerator The Einstein–Szilard or Einstein refrigerator is an absorption refrigerator which has no moving parts, operates at constant pressure, and requires only a heat source to operate. It was jointly invented in 1926 by Albert Einstein and his form ...

. * 1926 –

Willem Hendrik Keesom Willem Hendrik Keesom () (21 June 1876, Texel – 3 March 1956, Leiden) was a Dutch physicist who, in 1926, invented a method to freeze liquid helium. He also developed the first mathematical description of dipole–dipole interactions in 1 ...

solidifies helium. * 1926 – General Electric Company introduced the first hermetic compressor refrigerator * 1929 - David Forbes Keith of Toronto, Ontario, Canada received a patent for the Icy Ball which helped hundreds of thousands of families through the Dirty Thirties. * 1933 –

William Giauque William Francis Giauque (;''The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia'', 2004. May 12, 1895 – March 28, 1982) was a Canadian-born American chemist and Nobel laureate recognized in 1949 for his studies in the properties of matter at temperatures clo ...

and others – Adiabatic demagnetization refrigeration * 1937 –

Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa or Peter Kapitza (Russian: Пётр Леонидович Капица, Romanian: Petre Capița ( – 8 April 1984) was a leading Soviet physicist and Nobel laureate, best known for his work in low-temperature physic ...

, John F. Allen, and

Don Misener Don Misener (A.D. Misener) (1911-1996) was a physicist. Along with Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa and John F. Allen, Misener discovered the superfluid phase of matter in 1937. Misener was a graduate student at the University of Toronto in 1935. He j ...

discover

superfluidity Superfluidity is the characteristic property of a fluid with zero viscosity which therefore flows without any loss of kinetic energy. When stirred, a superfluid forms vortices that continue to rotate indefinitely. Superfluidity occurs in two ...

using helium-4 at 2.2 K * 1937 – Frans Michel Penning invents a type of

cold cathode A cold cathode is a cathode that is not electrically heated by a filament.A negatively charged electrode emits electrons or is the positively charged terminal. For more, see field emission. A cathode may be considered "cold" if it emits more el ...

vacuum gauge known as

Penning gauge Pressure measurement is the measurement of an applied force by a fluid (liquid or gas) on a surface. Pressure is typically measured in units of force per unit of surface area. Many techniques have been developed for the measurement of pressure ...

* 1944 –

Manne Siegbahn Karl Manne Georg Siegbahn FRS(For) HFRSE (3 December 1886 – 26 September 1978) was a Swedish physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1924 "for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy". Biography Siegbahn ...

, the Siegbahn pump * 1949 – S.G. Sydoriak, E.R. Grilly, E.F. Hammel, first measurements on pure 3He in the 1 K range * 1950 - Invention of the so-called Gifford-McMahon cooler by K.W. Taconis (patent US2,567,454) * 1951 –

Heinz London Heinz London (Bonn, Germany 7 November 1907 – 3 August 1970) was a German-British physicist. Together with his brother Fritz London he was a pioneer in the field of superconductivity. Biography London was born in Bonn in a liberal Jewish-Ge ...

invents the principle of the

dilution refrigerator A 3He/4He dilution refrigerator is a cryogenic device that provides continuous cooling to temperatures as low as 2 mK, with no moving parts in the low-temperature region. The cooling power is provided by the heat of mixing of the Hel ...

* 1955 – Willi Becker

turbomolecular pump A turbomolecular pump is a type of vacuum pump, superficially similar to a turbopump, used to obtain and maintain high vacuum. These pumps work on the principle that gas molecules can be given momentum in a desired direction by repeated collisi ...

concept * 1956 – G.K. Walters, W.M. Fairbank, discovery of phase separation in 3He-4He mixtures * 1957 – Lewis D. Hall, Robert L. Jepsen and John C. Helmer ion pump based on Penning discharge * 1959 – Kleemenko cycle * 1960 - Reinvention of the Gifford-McMahon cooler by H.O. McMahon and W.E. Gifford * 1965 – D.O. Edwards, and others, discovery of finite solubility of 3He in 4He at 0K * 1965 – P. Das, R. de Bruyn Ouboter, K.W. Taconis, one-shot dilution refrigerator * 1966 – H.E. Hall, P.J. Ford, K. Thomson, continuous dilution refrigerator * 1972 – David Lee, Robert Coleman Richardson and Douglas Osheroff discover superfluidity in helium-3 at 0.002 K. * 1973 –

Linear compressor A linear compressor is a gas compressor where the piston moves along a linear track to minimize friction and reduce energy loss during conversion of motion. This technology has been successfully used in cryogenic applications which must be oilless ...

* 1978 –

Laser cooling Laser cooling includes a number of techniques in which atoms, molecules, and small mechanical systems are cooled, often approaching temperatures near absolute zero. Laser cooling techniques rely on the fact that when an object (usually an atom) a ...

demonstrated in the groups of Wineland and Dehmelt. * 1983 - Orifice-type pulse tube refrigerator invented by Mikulin, Tarasov, and Shkrebyonock * 1986 – Karl Alexander Müller and J. Georg Bednorz discover

high-temperature superconductivity High-temperature superconductors (abbreviated high-c or HTS) are defined as materials that behave as superconductors at temperatures above , the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. The adjective "high temperature" is only in respect to previou ...

* 1995 –

Eric Cornell Eric Allin Cornell (born December 19, 1961) is an American physicist who, along with Carl E. Wieman, was able to synthesize the first Bose–Einstein condensate in 1995. For their efforts, Cornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle shared the Nobel ...

and Carl Wieman create the first

Bose–Einstein condensate In condensed matter physics, a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter that is typically formed when a gas of bosons at very low densities is cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero (−273.15 °C or −459.6 ...

, using a dilute gas of

Rubidium-87 Rubidium (37Rb) has 36 isotopes, with naturally occurring rubidium being composed of just two isotopes; 85Rb (72.2%) and the radioactive 87Rb (27.8%). Normal mixes of rubidium are radioactive enough to fog photographic film in approximately 30 to ...

cooled to 170 nK. They won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2001 for BEC. * 1999 – D.J. Cousins and others, dilution refrigerator reaching 1.75 mK * 1999 - The current world record lowest temperature was set at 100 picokelvins (pK), or 0.000 000 000 1 of a kelvin, by cooling the nuclear spins in a piece of

rhodium Rhodium is a chemical element with the symbol Rh and atomic number 45. It is a very rare, silvery-white, hard, corrosion-resistant transition metal. It is a noble metal and a member of the platinum group. It has only one naturally occurring i ...

metal.

21st century

* 2000 - Nuclear spin temperatures below 100 pK were reported for an experiment at the

Helsinki University of Technology Helsinki University of Technology (TKK; fi, Teknillinen korkeakoulu; sv, Tekniska högskolan) was a technical university in Finland. It was located in Otaniemi, Espoo in the metropolitan area of Greater Helsinki. The university was founded in ...

's Low Temperature Lab in

Espoo Espoo (, ; sv, Esbo) is a city and municipality in the region of Uusimaa in the Republic of Finland. It is located on the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland, bordering the cities of Helsinki, Vantaa, Kirkkonummi, Vihti and Nurmijärvi ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

. However, this was the temperature of one particular

degree of freedom Degrees of freedom (often abbreviated df or DOF) refers to the number of independent variables or parameters of a thermodynamic system. In various scientific fields, the word "freedom" is used to describe the limits to which physical movement or ...

– a quantum property called nuclear spin – not the overall average

thermodynamic temperature Thermodynamic temperature is a quantity defined in thermodynamics as distinct from kinetic theory or statistical mechanics. Historically, thermodynamic temperature was defined by Kelvin in terms of a macroscopic relation between thermodynamic ...

for all possible degrees in freedom. * 2014 - Scientists in the

CUORE The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE , also ) is a particle physics facility located underground at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Assergi, Italy. CUORE was designed primarily as a search for neutrinoless dou ...

collaboration at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy cooled a copper vessel with a volume of one cubic meter to for 15 days, setting a record for the lowest temperature in the known universe over such a large contiguous volume * 2015 - Experimental physicists at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) successfully cooled molecules in a gas of sodium potassium to a temperature of 500 nanokelvins, and it is expected to exhibit an exotic

state of matter In physics, a state of matter is one of the distinct forms in which matter can exist. Four states of matter are observable in everyday life: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Many intermediate states are known to exist, such as liquid crystal, ...

by cooling these molecules a bit further. * 2015 - A team of atomic physicists from Stanford University used a matter-wave lensing technique to cool a sample of rubidium atoms to an effective temperature of 50 pK along two spatial dimensions. * 2017 - Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL), an experimental instrument launched to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...

(ISS) in 2018. The instrument creates extremely cold conditions in the microgravity environment of the ISS leading to the formation of Bose Einstein Condensates that are a magnitude colder than those that are created in laboratories on Earth. In this space-based laboratory, up to 20 seconds interaction times and as low as 1 picokelvin (

10^

K) temperatures are projected to be achievable, and it could lead to exploration of unknown

quantum mechanical Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, qua ...

phenomena and test some of the most fundamental laws of physics.

References

External links