Cold is the absence of heat, hence in order to decrease a temperature, one "removes heat", rather than "adding cold."

1756 William Cullen at the University of Glasgow used a pump to create a partial vacuum over a container of diethyl ether, which then boiled, absorbing heat from the surrounding air. The experiment even created a small amount of ice, but had no practical application at that time.
1805 American inventor Oliver Evans designed but never built a refrigeration system based on the vapor-compression refrigeration cycle rather than chemical solutions or volatile liquids such as ethyl ether.
1820 The British scientist Michael Faraday liquefied ammonia and other gases by using high pressures and low temperatures
1834 An American living in Great Britain, Jacob Perkins, obtained the first patent for a vapor-compression refrigeration system
1842 Aan American physician, John Gorrie, designed the first system for refrigerating water to produce ice and had a US patent granted in 1851.
1848 Alexander Twining began experimenting with vapor-compression refrigeration and obtained patents in 1850 and 1853. He is credited with having initiated commercial refrigeration in the United States by 1856.
1851 James Harrison from Scotland began operation of a mechanical ice-making machine in 1851 on the banks of the Barwon River at Rocky Point in Geelong, Victoria. His first commercial ice-making machine followed in 1854 and his patent for an ether liquid-vapour compression refrigeration system was granted in 1855. Harrison introduced commercial vapor-compression refrigeration to breweries and meat packing houses, and by 1861 a dozen of his systems were in operation.
1860s Thaddeus Lowe, an American balloonist from the Civil War then invented a "Compression Ice Machine" which revolutionized the cold storage industry during the
1882 Kiwi William Soltau Davidson fitted a compression refrigeration unit to the New Zealand vessel Dunedin, leading to a meat and dairy boom in Australia and South America.
1911 Domestic mechanical refrigerators became available in the United States .