This is one of the first “batch freezers” produced by Emery Thompson in the early twentieth-century. Based on a design he had originally patented in 1906, this device was in effect the first automated batch freezer, used for producing ice cream and gelato. Prior to this invention, and for many years before it finally caught on, ice cream freezers were usually powered by a hand crank. By adding an electric motor, this design helped to make ice cream the mass-produced consumer product that we enjoy today.