Frederick McKinley Jones
Orphaned at nine with a sixth-grade education, he invented mobile refrigeration — the cold chain that now delivers virtually every fresh thing you eat.
Frederick McKinley Jones was born in Cincinnati in 1893 and orphaned at nine. Raised for a time by a priest, he ran away at eleven, was a full-time auto mechanic by fourteen, and a shop foreman at fifteen — with a sixth-grade education. He taught himself electronics deeply enough to build a radio transmitter for the town of Hallock, Minnesota, and invent movie sound equipment.
In 1938 a trucking executive complained that his loads of fresh food kept spoiling — ice and salt melted away mid-route. Jones built the answer: a compact, shock-resistant refrigeration unit that could survive life mounted on a truck. Patented in 1940, it became the founding product of Thermo King, the company he co-founded with Joseph Numero.
His invention created the cold chain — refrigerated trucks, railcars, ships and planes — that made fresh meat, dairy and produce available anywhere, year-round, and carried blood and medicine for soldiers in World War II. Jones earned more than 60 patents. In 1944 he became the first Black member of the American Society of Refrigeration Engineers, and in 1991 he was posthumously awarded the National Medal of Technology — the first Black American to receive it.
Why You Should Know Them
Your last trip to the grocery store — and every vaccine that has ever shipped cold — used his invention. A man the school system barely touched built the system that feeds the modern world.