Domestic refrigerators started replaeing the "ice box" little more than a half century ago. Today that industry produces what is undoubtedly the most reliable. competitively priced mass product on the market. The competitive nature of' the refrigerator'industry has challenged its engineers to the utmost in inventiveness and utilization of the new developments in materials, manufacturing processes, testing and quality control procedures.

It is a general assumption that domestic refrigerators of like size and food storagecapacity are priced about the same, with practically the same energy consumption or cost ofoperation. It appears, therefore that our engineers have designed, and our factories now areproducing the best possible regrigerators for overall use with the minimum in energy consumption,thereby giving the housewife reasonable costs of operation. Such is not the case.

This paper goes on to the basic design factors which affect energy consumption.