A Cool Patent
On December 16, 1879 Mt. Horeb businessman Ole C. Nuubson filed a design for an improvement in milk coolers with the U.S. Commissioner of Patents.
Keeping milk from spoiling was important in pre-electric days. Farmers would cool their milk in basements, springs and streams, with tanks of water, or with devices filled with ice water or cold water in which the milk was run over the exterior. One early cooler in the Mt. Horeb Area Museum’s holdings consists of a receptacle for ice and water, with a strainer on top for receiving the milk. The milk runs over the exterior of the water filled chamber and is collected in a trough below.
According to Nuubson, his cooler could “furnish a more efficient device than any now in use for cooling and preserving milk, and for raising cream.” Ole was granted his patent fourteen days after its file date. Nuubson’s cooler boasted of a receptacle where the cold water ran through the center of the warm milk. “[P]laced anywhere in the shade it will keep its contents sweet, even in warm weather,” he claimed. It is not known how many Nuubson milk coolers were sold, if any.
Andrew Leverson, the first Norwegian businessman in Mt. Horeb’s Old Town, had sold his general store and merchandise in September of 1876 to Nuubson, who ran the business until the fall of 1880. Nuubson had also become Mt. Horeb’s postmaster after Sept. 22, 1876.
