Short answers, pulled from the story.
The ancient Chinese described religious ceremonies for filling and emptying ice cellars in 1000 BC. These early structures stored snow and ice to cool beverages rather than preserve food.
William Cullen designed a small refrigerating machine in 1755 that created partial vacuum over diethyl ether. The boiling liquid absorbed heat from surrounding air and produced a small amount of ice.
The Dunedin sailed for London on the 15th of February 1882 marking the first commercially successful refrigerated shipping voyage. William Soltau Davidson commissioned the ship to be refitted with a compression refrigeration unit for meat shipment in 1881.
General Electric released the Monitor Top, the first refrigerator to run on electricity, in 1927. Frigidaire synthesized Freon in 1930 creating safer refrigerators for home and consumer use.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order called the Rural Electrification Administration on the 11th of May 1935. Just a few years later, 300,000 people in rural areas received power in their homes.