quality:correction
Harvesting

There were thriving industries in 16th–17th century England whereby low-lying areas along the Thames Estuary were flooded during the winter, and ice harvested in carts and stored inter-seasonally in insulated wooden houses as a provision to an icehouse often located in large country houses, and widely used to keep fish fresh when caught in distant waters. This was allegedly copied by an Englishman who had seen the same activity in China. Ice was imported into England from Norway on a considerable scale as early as 1823.

In the United States, the first cargo of ice was sent from New York City to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1799, and by the first half of the 19th century, ice harvesting had become a big business. Frederic Tudor, who became known as the "Ice King", worked on developing better insulation products for long distance shipments of ice, especially to the tropics; this became known as the ice trade.

Between 1812 and 1822, under Lloyd Hesketh Bamford Hesketh 's instruction, Gwrych Castle was built with 18 large towers, one of those towers is called the 'Ice Tower'. Its sole purpose was to store Ice.

Trieste sent ice to Egypt, Corfu, and Zante; Switzerland, to France; and Germany sometimes was supplied from Bavarian lakes. From 1930s and up until 1994, the Hungarian Parliament building used ice harvested in the winter from Lake Balaton for air conditioning.

Ice houses were used to store ice formed in the winter, to make ice available all year long, and an early type of refrigerator known as an icebox was cooled using a block of ice placed inside it. Many cities had a regular ice delivery service during the summer. The advent of artificial refrigeration technology made the delivery of ice obsolete.

Ice is still harvested for ice and snow sculpture events. For example, a swing saw is used to get ice for the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival each year from the frozen surface of the Songhua River.