One of my favorite books is How We Got to Now by Steven Johnson.  He explores how six innovations that have shaped our modern world – Glass, Cold, Sound, Clean, Time, and Light – came about and rippled through our modern world.

The chapter on Cold in particular was an interesting topic.  Innovations in refrigeration have transformed food preservation, where we live (imagine Phoenix in August without AC), medicine and global trade.

Most of those gains came from the gas-compression refrigeration cycle – the tech behind your fridge and AC.   Other than some improvements in compression or changes in the gas (goodbye, Freon), the technology is essentially unchanged since the 1930s.

But change is coming.

Enter magneto-caloric cooling.  This technology uses materials that heat-up or cool-down when placed in a magnetic field.  No more high-pressure gas, no chemicals, no more noisy pumps.  The material science behind it is almost magic.

I recently met with two leaders in this space: Magneto Co-Founder Ivo Dusek and MAGNOTHERM Co-Founder Timur SİRMAN. While the technology is only in R&D and early-stage commercialization, they see tremendous promise:

• No harmful refrigerants (like HFCs)
• No high-pressure systems (refrigerant loss, safety)
• Higher Efficiency than conventional compression cooling
• Quiet Operation

Check them both out on linked-in for more on a very promising technology.

So what deep-tech innovations are inspiring you?