Einstein's Forgotten Invention: A Fridge That Could Have Saved Lives
The Einstein-Szilard Refrigerator
In the 1920s, toxic gas leaks from refrigerator compressors killed families in their sleep. Albert Einstein and physicist Leo Szilard invented a safer pump with no moving parts, using electromagnetism instead. They patented it in 1930, but the Great Depression, Nazi violence, and the rise of Freon doomed their invention. Decades later, a working model proved its viability—and its potential to have prevented countless tragedies.
It isn’t possible to know what Einstein and Szilard might have accomplished, had their professional and personal lives not been interrupted.