A FRIDGE built at a Cowley factory more than 60 years ago will take centre stage at London’s Science Museum next month.

Bedrich Pollak was part of a team at the Pressed Steel Company that built the award-winning Prestcold Packaway refrigerator, designed to fit into cramped kitchens.

The team’s work in the 1950s will be celebrated when the prototype fridge, which has had pride of place in the kitchen at the Pollak family’s home in Hillsborough Road, Cowley, is moved to the museum in July.

Mr Pollak’s son John, 68, said: “I’m really delighted about it because it means my dad’s name will be on it. It will be a little bit of history of British engineering.”

The business owner said his father, a Czechoslovakian refugee, came to the country in 1940 and worked as an engineer at the Pressed Steel Company plant. He was part of a design team that was tasked with creating a new type of refrigerator.

Mr Pollak junior said the team designed a fridge using a rotary compressor, instead of a reciprocating compressor usually used by manufacturers, which greatly reduced the fridge’s size. He said normal refrigerators of the era had a lot of wasted space.

Former City of Oxford High School for Boys pupil Mr Pollak said the change of compressor enabled the Cowley team to create a fridge which could be fitted underneath a kitchen counter.

Mr Pollak, who now lives in Hempstead, Essex, added: “It was revolutionary. “ The prototype of the Prestcold Packaway fridge arrived at the Pollak’s family home when John Pollack was about seven or eight years old.

He said he remembered his mother Dorothy, who was a former shorthand typist, immediately filling the fridge with vegetables, milk and squash. Mr Pollak added: “It’s been in the house ever since.

“It has never stopped working. It has never failed, nothing has ever gone wrong with it.”

In 1959, Charles Longman was awarded the first Prince Philip Designers Prize, on behalf of the work of the Pressed Steel Company team.

The award celebrated products which stood out from designs typical of the 1950s.

The prototype of the Prestcold fridge was switched off on Tuesday and removed from the house before it is sent to the London museum.

Mr Pollak said: “I’m feeling quite tearful about it. I think my dad would be looking down and he would be very proud.”