"refrigerator" = "vessel", 1793 & 1803; antedates OED 1824-

[Joel S. Berson]

Thomas Moore obtained a U.S. patent in 1793 for a crude refrigerator
he made to transport butter to his customers.  In 1803 he published a
pamphlet titled "An Essay on the Most Eligible Construction of
Ice-Houses and a Description of the Newly-Invented Machine called the
Refrigerator".

In Joseph C. Jones, Jr., _America's Icemen: An Illustrated History of
the United States Natural Ice Industry, 1665-1925_ (Humble, Texas:
Jobeco Books, 1984), p. 137.  Jones does not give his
sources.  Presumably a patent can be recovered; and Moore's 1803
"essay" is held by libraries and allegedly is in Early American
Imprints, Second series.

OED 1989 has for "refrigerator" sense 2 "An apparatus, vessel, or
chamber for producing or maintaining a low degree of temperature ...
b. Any vessel, chamber, or apparatus in which the contents are
preserved by maintaining a temperature near, at, or below freezing
point, esp. in the cold storage of food.", it's earliest quotation
for sense 2. being 1824.

Surely Moore's chest fits sense 2.b?

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