0:02

Happy Saturday. Not too long

0:04

ago, we had an episode on Augustine Daily

0:06

and we talked about the installation

0:09

of air conditioning at his Fifth

0:11

Avenue Theater in New York. Not

0:13

long after that episode came out, we got an email

0:16

from listener Charlotte asking if we had ever

0:18

done an episode on the history of air

0:20

conditioning, and I thought, hey,

0:23

I meant to pull that out as a Saturday

0:25

classic to run after the Augustine

0:27

Daily episode, but I forgot

0:30

so here it is now weeks

0:32

later, Thanks Charlotte. This

0:34

episode originally came out on August twenty

0:36

ninth, twenty eighteen. Welcome

0:41

to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a

0:43

production of iHeartRadio.

0:51

Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

0:53

I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly

0:55

Frye. It's August, although

0:58

by the time this podcast comes out I could possibly

1:00

be September. Not quite sure when this one's gonna

1:02

drop yet. And also, it's

1:05

hot. That's what August means usually

1:07

for us, at least, yeah for us for

1:09

sure. I started working on this episode

1:11

on one of those days when I woke up and it was already

1:14

eighty two degrees inside my apartment.

1:16

It is eighty six degrees in my little studio

1:19

right now, I am sitting with

1:21

a cold pack draped over my chair. So

1:24

I decided we should talk about the history of

1:26

air conditioning. And sorry

1:29

to our Southern Hemisphere friends who are always

1:32

getting the episodes in which I'm complaining

1:34

that it's hot, and so We're going to talk

1:36

about ice or air conditioning

1:38

or whatever. When it's winter there.

1:43

I could go there and complain about winter while

1:46

you're here and complain about hot because I love the heat,

1:48

but that cold is not for me. So

1:53

about a year ago, we did an episode on

1:55

Frederick Tudor, who cut ice out of ponds

1:57

in Massachusetts in winter and then

1:59

turn that into a globally traded commodity.

2:02

In that episode, we talked about some of the ways

2:04

that people had been making ice and refrigerating

2:07

things in warmer parts of the world before

2:09

the establishment of the ice trade and the development

2:12

of mechanical refrigeration. Things

2:14

like people in the Indian subcontinent using

2:17

earthenware vessels as evaporative coolers

2:19

to make kind of a semi frozen slush,

2:22

or using saltpeter infused water

2:24

to chill bottles of beverages. Similarly,

2:27

people all over the world had figured

2:29

out ways to keep themselves at least relatively

2:32

cool for millennia before the invention

2:34

of air conditioning, and a lot of these methods

2:36

are still in use in one way or another

2:38

today. The most obvious starting

2:41

point is the fan. People have

2:43

probably fanned themselves with their hands

2:45

or with relatively flat objects for about

2:47

as long as people have existed, but in terms

2:50

of objects created specifically

2:52

as fans, we know that

2:54

goes back at least five thousand years.

2:57

We have examples of hand fans

2:59

from numerous ancient civilizations

3:01

all over the world. The earliest

3:04

fans were fixed or rigid, and made

3:06

of all kinds of feathers, fronds,

3:08

textiles, and other materials. The

3:11

first folding fans were probably developed

3:13

in either Japan or China. There are

3:16

examples from both that are about the same

3:18

age, and both nations have their own

3:20

lore about the development of the folding fan.

3:23

Of course, fans themselves have their own history,

3:25

with all kinds of mythology and symbolism

3:28

and etiquette and art and culture woven

3:31

in, and a lot of culture's fans have

3:33

also had religious or ceremonial

3:35

uses as well. And that's on top

3:37

of all the variation in the materials

3:40

that fans have been made of and how they've been

3:42

designed and constructed. We probably,

3:44

if we felt inclined, could do a whole episode

3:47

just on fans. Only if we talk

3:49

about Star Trek and the fan dance,

3:53

then I'm in a lot

3:55

of the earliest personal cooling methods

3:57

were built around the fan, people either

4:00

fanning themselves or having a servant

4:02

or an enslaved person do it for them.

4:05

In places that were both hot and dry,

4:07

people used fans to force air through

4:09

dampened screens or mats, which would

4:11

both humidify the air and cool the

4:13

air as water evaporated. In

4:16

places where it was hot and damp, people

4:18

were more likely to use fans to move air

4:20

over ice, although that still made

4:22

the room even more humid, and depending

4:24

on where that ice came from, it might also

4:27

make the room smell like gross pond

4:29

water. After President James

4:31

Garfield was shot in eighteen eighty one,

4:33

his doctors used a variation on this

4:35

fan and ice method to try to keep

4:38

him cool, and that used almost five

4:40

hundred pounds of ice per day. Leonardo

4:43

da Vinciti developed a water powered

4:45

fan in about fifteen hundred, and

4:47

mechanically driven fans powered by things

4:50

like hand cranks were developed about the same time.

4:52

The first electric fan was

4:55

developed by Crocker and Curtis Electric

4:57

Motor Company in eighteen eighty two.

5:00

That in eighteen eighty four, William Whiteley

5:02

developed the all Weather Eye,

5:04

which was a fan that attached to the

5:06

axle of a carriage, so when

5:08

the carriage was moving, the fan turned

5:11

and it forced air over a block of

5:13

ice that was mounted under the passenger

5:15

area, sort of air conditioning

5:17

the inside of the carriage. That's pretty ingenious.

5:20

There are also all kinds of architectural

5:23

features all over the world intended

5:25

to keep people cooler. Before industrialization

5:28

and the creation of air conditioning, most

5:30

people lived in buildings that were adapted to

5:32

where they lived. They used local materials

5:35

and building techniques which were suited

5:37

to the needs of the climate and the landscape.

5:39

The whole idea is summed up as

5:41

vernacular architecture. Vernacular

5:44

architecture is absolutely full of ways

5:46

to deal with heat and humidity, and there

5:48

are so many that we cannot possibly

5:51

name them all, just like we cannot possibly

5:53

name every variation on the fan. But

5:55

here are some examples. People on

5:57

coasts oriented their homes to catch this sea

6:00

breeze through the windows. Porches

6:02

gave people an outdoor, semi sheltered

6:05

place to go when the house got too hot,

6:07

and sleeping porches had bunks

6:09

or hammocks already there for when it was just too

6:11

hot to possibly go to sleep in the house. Thick

6:14

walls, high ceilings, and large

6:16

windows have insulated buildings while

6:19

also allowing air circulation. Shady

6:21

courtyards and fountains of offered

6:23

respite from the heat, and in places

6:26

where it's hot in the day and cool

6:28

at night, thick walls made from

6:30

mud or adobe absorb heat

6:32

during the day and to keep the inside cooler,

6:34

and then release it at night to keep the inside

6:36

warmer. Then, of course there's just planting

6:39

trees to shade the buildings from the sun.

6:41

In the southeastern United States, one

6:44

common design was the dog trot house.

6:46

This was a house with two halves separated

6:49

by a roofed breezeway in between, which

6:51

usually also connected a front and back

6:54

porch. Usually the kitchen

6:56

was on one side of the dog trot while the

6:58

sleeping area was on the other, so you

7:00

weren't heating up your bedroom while you were cooking

7:02

your food. Dog trot houses were

7:05

often built upon bricks or stones rather

7:07

than resting on a foundation or the ground,

7:09

and that allowed air to circulate under the house

7:11

as well. And sometimes these are also called

7:14

possum trot houses. And the same

7:16

basic design is still used in some

7:18

places today. My sister in law lives

7:20

in a house just like this. Yeah, there

7:22

are also, I mean there are historic ones that still

7:25

stand in newly built houses that

7:27

are still following that same basic design.

7:29

I remember when I was in college there was one at the

7:31

botanical gardens next door to the campus

7:34

where we like to go sit around and read. Step

7:37

wells are a way of dealing

7:39

with the heat in very arid countries,

7:42

especially on the Indian subcontinent. This

7:44

is a pool of water very very deep

7:46

underground which people would reach down

7:48

an incredibly long spiral or zigzag

7:51

staircase. These pools had

7:53

to be that deep underground because that's how

7:55

far down you had to go to get to the water table.

7:58

They were used as a water but

8:00

then also having such a deep, dark

8:03

underground shaft gave people a place

8:05

to retreat out of the heat. Sometimes

8:07

stepwells were designed to serve as very

8:09

large gathering places with intricate

8:12

stairways and terraces, basically lots

8:14

of places for people to go down there and

8:16

chill out. A lot of these stepwells

8:18

fell into disuse as human activity

8:20

lowered the water table, either gradually

8:23

filling with trash or being taken

8:25

over by animals. The British

8:27

Empire also destroyed a lot of them

8:29

under the idea that they were unsanitary,

8:31

and this was kind of ironic since it was

8:33

extremely fashionable for British people

8:36

to complain about how miserable the heat was

8:38

in colonial India. Today,

8:40

though, some stepwells are being restored and

8:42

reopened as water sources, and the same

8:44

principle has been used to design modern buildings

8:47

that require less energy to cool. Wind

8:50

catchers were common in Persian architecture

8:53

starting thousands of years ago, and a lot

8:55

of them are still standing and still working

8:57

today. This is essentially a

8:59

window tower that's built to take advantage

9:01

of the prevailing winds, so exactly

9:04

how the tower is designed, how many windows

9:06

it has, and which direction it faces

9:08

depends on where it's being built. When

9:11

the wind blows through a windcatcher, it

9:13

draws hot air up out of the house.

9:16

Sometimes there's also a reservoir of water

9:18

or a very deep well inside the house,

9:20

so as the hot air moves out, moist,

9:22

cooler air is pulled up from below.

9:25

A similar design was also part of ancient

9:27

Egyptian architecture. So vernacular

9:30

architecture is just full of things

9:32

like this, and people living in hot

9:34

places have also adapted their behavior,

9:37

like the siesta during the hottest part

9:39

of the day. But as areas

9:41

have adopted air conditioning, these traditional

9:43

elements have tended to disappear as

9:45

people instead design buildings that

9:47

are going to be mechanically cooled. And

9:49

we're going to start talking about that in some detail

9:52

after we first pause for a little sponsor break.

10:04

Modern air conditioning was developed in the United

10:06

States, and the United States has adopted

10:08

it much faster than the rest of the

10:10

world, so the next stretch of

10:12

this show is going to be pretty US centric.

10:15

The first person in the United States to write

10:17

down some thoughts for creating a large

10:20

scale way to cool places was

10:22

John Gory in eighteen forty

10:24

two. He wrote about wanting to use mechanical

10:26

condensation to quote counteract

10:28

the evils of high temperature and

10:31

improve the condition of our cities.

10:33

He speculated about a massive city

10:36

that could use one machine to cool off

10:38

the entire place, as well as to cool

10:40

individual buildings. It's

10:42

not clear whether he ever made a working

10:44

prototype of this air conditioner he had

10:46

in mind, but he did create a refrigerator

10:49

that could make ice. He had this working

10:51

at the US Marine Hospital in Apalachicola,

10:54

Florida, in eighteen forty four,

10:56

and he patented it in eighteen fifty

10:58

one. That ice was put

11:00

to use in conjunction with fans to try

11:02

to keep patients with malaria and yellow

11:05

fever cool. By eighteen

11:07

eighty, people were using fans and ice together

11:09

to try to cool buildings on a much larger

11:12

scale. That year, New York's

11:14

Madison Square Theater was using four

11:16

tons of ice per day

11:18

to try to cool the theater in the summer. Before

11:21

trying that it would pretty much just not had

11:23

shows in the summer. There's some overlap

11:25

in the development of refrigeration and

11:27

air conditioning, and in the late eighteen eighties

11:29

people were also using refrigeration to

11:32

try to cool whole rooms. Pipes

11:35

were used to carry a refrigerant from a central

11:37

station out to customers, and

11:39

this central station refrigeration was mainly

11:42

used to cool whole rooms for things

11:44

like meat packing and cold storage.

11:47

A few businesses did try to put central

11:49

station refrigeration to use basically

11:51

as air conditioning for people's comfort,

11:54

though. In eighteen ninety one, a

11:56

restaurant called Ice Palace opened

11:58

in Saint Louis, Missouri that used

12:00

central station refrigeration to keep the whole

12:02

building cool, and it also decorated

12:04

the place with lots of pictures of wintry

12:07

scenes. Over the next couple of

12:09

decades, several people started designing

12:11

the systems that evolved into modern air

12:13

conditioning. Alfred Wolf

12:15

created cooling systems for a number of buildings

12:18

in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

12:21

In eighteen eighty nine, he created a ventilation

12:23

system for Carnegie Hall or Carnegie

12:26

if you liked that pronunciation, but most

12:28

people except Carnegie Hall as the pronunciation

12:30

on that one. These included racks

12:32

for blocks of ice, and that same

12:35

year he used chilling coils to cool

12:37

the air in a dissecting room at Cornell

12:39

Medical College, which seems like an

12:41

excellent venue for air conditioning. In

12:43

nineteen oh two, he created a fan driven

12:46

system for the New York stock Exchange that cost

12:48

one hundred and thirty thousand dollars, and

12:50

it could heat and cool the building. In

12:53

cold weather, steam boilers added heat

12:55

and humidity, and in hot weather, the air moved

12:58

over coils that were filled with a cooling brine

13:00

to cool and dehumidify. At

13:03

about the same time, engineer Stuart

13:05

Kramer was working in textile mills

13:08

in the South, especially in the winter.

13:10

That air in these mills would become very

13:12

dry, which was a problem. Cotton

13:14

thread is a lot more brittle and likely

13:17

to snap when it's too dry. Wool

13:19

is a lot easier to work when it's properly

13:22

moist. Plus static electricity

13:24

when working with a bunch of textiles in too

13:26

dry air, could be just unbearable.

13:29

Kramer developed systems that combined

13:31

ventilation with humidification. They

13:33

basically circulated the air while also

13:35

releasing a very fine mist of water.

13:38

The word that he coined for this combination

13:40

of temperature and humidity control was

13:43

air conditioning. Kramer was

13:45

awarded a patent for his air conditioning

13:47

system in nineteen oh six. Concurrently

13:49

with Wolf and Kramer, Willis

13:52

Carrier was working at Buffalo Forge

13:54

Company and the company made things

13:56

like blowers and bellows, and he had been

13:58

made head of its new ex experimental

14:00

engineering department. Those

14:02

three men that we've just talked about, his is probably

14:05

the name that at least rings a bell because Carrier

14:07

is still associated with air conditioning.

14:10

We just got a new air conditioner installed

14:12

and it is a Carrier unit. So.

14:16

Second, Wilhelm's Lithographic and Publishing

14:19

Company in Brooklyn, New York, was

14:21

one of Buffalo Forged Company's clients,

14:23

and they were having a problem with humidity.

14:26

Variations in the humidity affected

14:28

the paper that was running through their printing presses.

14:31

Sometimes this would cause the ink to bleed

14:34

or to smear, or for the paper to visibly

14:36

warp. But a bigger problem was

14:38

that they were printing in color. Colored

14:41

inks went onto the paper one layer

14:43

at the time. Even a slight

14:46

difference in humidity affected the paper

14:48

enough that the colors would be out of register.

14:50

Those layers wouldn't line up correctly.

14:52

It would not look like a cleanly

14:55

printed color document. It would look like overlapping

14:58

out of the lines, messed up color.

15:01

I'm thinking about the various episodes

15:03

we have done about artists and their work getting

15:06

printed cheaply, and I'm betting probably

15:08

these problems were part of how

15:11

they ended up such a mess. So

15:13

Carrier developed a system that moved air

15:15

over a series of coils that were cooled

15:17

with compressed ammonia. Moisture

15:20

condensed out of the air and onto the coils,

15:22

drying it out, which also had the side

15:24

effect of cooling the air off. He

15:27

ultimately developed a cooling, dehumidification,

15:29

and air circulation system that

15:32

maintained a temperature of seventy degrees

15:34

fahrenheit in winter or eighty degrees

15:36

in summer, and a relative humidity

15:38

that was a consistent fifty five percent.

15:41

This was Carrier's first attempt at endoor

15:43

climate control, and he went on to be

15:45

awarded numerous patents within

15:47

the field. The first one was issued in

15:49

nineteen oh six that was US Patent number

15:52

eighth eight eight nine seven apparatus

15:54

or treading Air. It described

15:57

a process for forcing air through

15:59

a spray of water and then through a set of baffles

16:01

to remove any kind of pollutants or impurities,

16:04

before then heating or cooling it and adding

16:06

or removing humidity. In

16:08

late nineteen oh seven, Buffalo Forge

16:10

Company established Carrier Air Conditioning

16:13

Company of America as a subsidy.

16:15

Willis Carrier was vice president and chief

16:18

engineer. Among the first clients

16:20

were flour mills and Jellette. Too

16:22

much humidity was causing the razor blades

16:25

to rust, and in nineteen eleven

16:27

Carrier gave an address on his rational

16:29

psychometric formulae at the American

16:32

Society of Mechanical Engineers. This

16:34

was also published in the Society's journal,

16:36

and the printed version started quote. A

16:38

specialized engineering field has

16:40

recently developed, technically known as

16:43

air conditioning or the artificial regulation

16:45

of atmospheric moisture. The

16:48

application of this new art to many

16:50

varied industries has been demonstrated

16:52

to be of greatest economic importance.

16:55

When applied to the blast furnace, that has

16:57

increased the net profit in the production

16:59

of pig iron from fifty cents

17:02

to seventy cents per ton, and in

17:04

the textile mill it has increased the output

17:06

from five to fifteen percent, at

17:08

the same time greatly improving the quality

17:10

and the hygienic conditions surrounding the operative.

17:13

And many other industries such

17:15

as lithographing, the manufacture

17:18

of candy bread, high explosives and photographic

17:21

films, and the drying and preparing

17:23

of delicate hygroscopic materials

17:25

such as macaroni and tobacco.

17:28

The question of humidity is equally

17:31

important. While air conditioning

17:33

has never been properly applied to coal

17:35

mines, the author is convinced

17:37

that if this were made compulsory, the

17:40

greater number of mine explosions

17:43

would be prevented. The paper

17:45

goes on to detail all kinds of

17:47

formulas about temperature, humidity,

17:49

and dew point, how they're interrelated,

17:52

how they can be adjusted, and what

17:54

the effect of those adjustments would be.

17:57

So that introduction to the paper and the paper itself

17:59

highlight a couple of things. One is

18:01

that initially air conditioning

18:04

had a slightly different meaning than it does today.

18:06

Today we most associate air conditioning

18:08

with keeping things cool and not too

18:11

humid. Another is that, almost

18:13

without exception, it was

18:15

not about the workers' comfort.

18:19

It was about the products they were making and

18:21

the temperature and humidity needs of the materials

18:23

and equipment they were working with, in order

18:25

to make them more productive and to make the business

18:28

more profitable. You can be hot

18:30

and sweaty, but the paper cannot correct.

18:34

We're going to get into how air conditioning finally

18:36

became a household commodity after

18:38

we first paused for a little sponsor break in

18:49

the early nineteen hundreds. The general

18:51

public didn't get to experience much

18:54

air conditioning in the United States unless

18:56

it was something that was being employed at their

18:58

work to make their work were profitable.

19:01

The Saint Louis World's Fair used mechanical

19:03

cooling at the Missouri State Building in nineteen

19:05

oh four. Roughly twenty million

19:08

people attended the fair, and for a lot of them

19:10

this was the first ever experience they

19:12

had with air conditioning. Home air

19:14

conditioning was still way out of reach.

19:17

The first home air conditioner was installed

19:19

in nineteen fourteen at the Charles Gates

19:22

Mansion in Minneapolis, and

19:24

it's not clear whether or not that air conditioner

19:26

was ever actually used because no one was living

19:28

in the mansion at the time. That

19:30

same year, Buffalo Forge Company decided

19:33

to pull out of the air conditioning business.

19:35

Willis Carrier and some of his colleagues founded

19:37

Carrier Engineering Corporation the following

19:39

year, with Carrier as its president.

19:42

Still at this point, air conditioning

19:44

was mainly focused on industry and not comfort,

19:47

and the availability of air conditioning meant that

19:49

factories were being opened in places where the

19:51

climate had not been very conducive

19:53

to it before that. Industrial

19:55

systems did sometimes have a side effect

19:57

of making things more comfortable for workers,

19:59

though. For example, the use

20:01

of air conditioning in tobacco processing

20:04

kept the tobacco leaves at the right humidity level,

20:06

but it also really cut down on the amount of

20:08

dust that the workers were subjected to. There

20:11

are, also, of course, other cases where it was the opposite,

20:13

where this

20:16

new air conditioning system would make it feel

20:18

to employees like it was cold and damp,

20:20

and they would want to open the windows, and if they opened

20:22

the windows, that would ruin the entire point

20:24

of having had this air conditioning in the first place.

20:27

It was in the nineteen twenties that people started

20:30

experiencing air conditioning that was specifically

20:32

installed to make them more comfortable while

20:34

also still being all about profitability.

20:38

Because this was at movie theaters.

20:41

There had been theater cooling systems

20:43

that combined ice blocks and fans before

20:45

this, but they often weren't all that effective.

20:48

They might wind up with some parts of the theater

20:50

being cold and damp while others were hot

20:52

and damp. Carrier Engineering

20:54

Corporation installed the first modern

20:57

air conditioning system at a movie theater,

21:00

Metropolitan Theater in Los Angeles in

21:02

nineteen twenty two, and

21:04

this was the start of three huge

21:06

trends. Number one, air

21:08

conditioned movie theaters. Number two

21:11

movie theaters heavily advertising

21:13

their air conditioning, and number three big

21:16

movies coming out in the summer when everybody

21:18

would be going to the movies to get out of the heat.

21:21

By the start of World War Two, most

21:23

of the movie theaters in the southern United

21:25

States had air conditioning, and

21:27

the US isn't the only place where movie

21:29

theaters were the first public buildings to be air

21:31

conditioned. The first public building to

21:33

be air conditioned in Hong Kong was King

21:36

Cinema that happened in nineteen thirty

21:38

one. After movie theaters,

21:40

the next public buildings to be air conditioned

21:42

in the United States were mostly large

21:44

department stores, especially in the South.

21:47

Smaller stores followed, and then came

21:49

office buildings, with the first air conditioned

21:52

offices often being banks.

21:54

The United States government started air

21:56

conditioning some of its buildings in the late nineteen

21:59

twenties. The House of Representatives

22:01

chamber was air conditioned in nineteen twenty

22:03

eight, and then the Senate in nineteen twenty nine,

22:05

and then the White House and Executive Building in

22:08

nineteen thirty. The Supreme Court was

22:10

air conditioned in nineteen thirty one.

22:12

There had been some debate about whether these systems

22:14

should be installed, Even though

22:17

Washington, DC summers are famously

22:19

punishing in terms of the heat and humidity.

22:21

There were worries that people would see

22:24

legislators and Supreme Court justices

22:26

as weak if they were going to work in

22:28

comfortable air conditioned buildings. Over

22:31

these same years, Carrier and other

22:33

engineers were continuing to refine

22:35

air conditioning technology. Has included

22:38

more efficient compressors for the refrigerant

22:40

and refrigerants themselves that were safer

22:43

to use. That compressed ammonia

22:45

that was being used in the earliest air conditioners

22:48

was extremely toxic. What breathing

22:51

ammonia air isn't good for me? Even

22:54

so, by the nineteen twenties, home air conditioning

22:56

was still pretty rare, unless a person

22:59

was perhaps so healthy that they could afford

23:01

to install one at their unoccupied mansion

23:03

in Minnesota. But that started

23:05

to change as corporations started to

23:07

develop more compact and affordable models.

23:10

Brigid Air debuted a room cooler

23:12

in nineteen twenty nine. In nineteen

23:15

thirty one, HH Schultz and JQ.

23:17

Sherman launched an early version of

23:19

the window air conditioner that was too

23:21

expensive to actually be workable. The

23:24

Thorn room air conditioner came out

23:26

in nineteen thirty two, and most

23:28

of today's window air conditioners still look

23:31

a lot like it. Yeah, the

23:33

window air conditioning technology has

23:35

not changed all that much

23:38

since this happened. Hotels

23:41

had started installing air conditioning

23:43

not long after movie theaters did, but at

23:45

first it was only in the lobbies and the public

23:47

spaces. The first hotel with

23:50

air conditioned guest rooms was

23:52

the Detroit Statler in nineteen thirty four.

23:54

Even though window air conditioners were starting

23:57

to become a lot more affordable, the

23:59

Great Depression took a toll on the whole industry.

24:02

One exception was in the American Southwest,

24:04

which was also struck by the dust bowl.

24:06

At about the same time, people

24:08

who could find the money to do so installed

24:11

air conditioners to try to keep the relentless

24:13

dust out of their homes. In nineteen

24:15

thirty nine, the Carrier Company went to the New York

24:18

World's Fair with its Igloo of Tomorrow

24:21

which both demonstrated and educated people

24:23

about air conditioning. That same year,

24:25

Packered debuted the first air conditioned

24:28

car, but that was pretty slow to be adopted.

24:31

Only ten percent of cars sold

24:33

in the United States had air conditioning in nineteen

24:35

sixty six, but by two thousand it was

24:37

ninety eight percent. Also

24:39

in the nineteen thirties, swamp coolers

24:42

started to be manufactured to cool the air

24:44

in dry environments. Unlike

24:46

most of the systems we've been talking about, which

24:48

used coils filled with some kind of refrigerant

24:51

to cool and dehumidify the air,

24:53

swamp coolers cool the air by adding

24:56

moisture. Greyhound started

24:58

air conditioning its buses in night eighteen forty,

25:00

and in nineteen forty two, power plants

25:02

in the United States started implementing summer

25:04

peaking to handle the increased electricity

25:07

demand caused by all this air conditioning. The

25:09

first really affordable window units

25:12

hit the market in nineteen fifty one, which

25:14

put air conditioning on the way to becoming

25:16

almost ubiquitous in the United States.

25:19

Even though John Gory's first attempt

25:21

at creating a cooling system was all about

25:23

patients in a hospital, hospitals

25:26

were slow to adopt air conditioning. By

25:28

nineteen sixty two, only fifteen percent

25:31

of hospital patient rooms in the United

25:33

States were air conditioned. That

25:35

same year, a Federal Housing Administration

25:37

official was quoted as saying, quote, within

25:39

a few years, any house that is not air conditioned

25:42

will probably be obsolescent. I

25:44

couldn't find data about public schools,

25:46

but just as a side note, I was in public

25:49

school in North Carolina from nineteen eighty

25:51

to nineteen ninety three.

25:53

I was almost never in an air conditioned

25:55

classroom. Nor was my college dorm

25:57

air conditioned. I'm a few years

26:00

ahead of you, but by that point I was in Florida

26:02

and everything was air conditioned. So yeah,

26:05

So the only classrooms I remember being

26:07

air conditioned were in one case,

26:10

being in a newly constructed part

26:12

of the school that was like brand new. We also

26:14

had these things that were called portable classroom

26:17

units. Oh yeah, really trailers. The

26:19

trailers were air conditioned most of the time with

26:21

like a little window unit, and

26:23

that was really

26:26

it. So we had this whole system of

26:28

if it was going to be too hot for it to

26:31

be safe in the classroom, we had an hour early

26:33

dismissal. Huh. Fascinating.

26:36

Yeah, so, uh,

26:38

that's the story of how hot it was. There

26:41

would usually be an oscillating fan mounted

26:43

up on the wall, and just the kids in

26:46

the classroom seats would just sort of sway back

26:48

and forth trying to catch the air from the oscillating

26:50

fan for as long as possible. Meanwhile,

26:55

I was like the weirdy kid, like, can I stand outside?

26:58

It's cold in here. Central

27:00

air conditioning debuted in the nineteen seventies.

27:03

That was also in the middle of an energy

27:05

crisis. This prompted the US federal

27:07

government to put together its first federal

27:10

energy efficiency standard for air conditioning.

27:13

So to be clear, when central air conditioning debuted,

27:15

there were plenty of places that were having the whole

27:17

building air conditioned, but

27:19

this was like a custom designed system

27:22

most of the time, rather than having

27:24

a model for central air conditioning that could

27:26

be applied to a lot of different

27:29

homes. Like we said earlier, air

27:31

conditioning was adopted much faster in

27:33

the United States than in the rest of the world.

27:36

In nineteen eighty, half of

27:38

the world's air conditioning was installed

27:40

in the United States. This means that the United

27:42

States has also been using a lot more electricity

27:45

on air conditioning than the rest of the world

27:47

has, even as other nations have started

27:49

adopting air conditioning a lot more rapidly

27:51

in more recent years. In twenty

27:54

fifteen, the United States was using more

27:56

electricity for air conditioning than the

27:58

entire rest of the world war and

28:01

was using more electricity just for

28:03

ac than the entire continent

28:05

of Africa was using for any purpose

28:07

at all. According to the Energy Information

28:09

Administration's Residential Energy Consumption

28:12

Survey that was released in twenty eleven,

28:14

eighty seven percent of households in the United

28:17

States have an air conditioner or central air.

28:20

By comparison, eleven percent of

28:22

households in Brazil and two percent

28:24

of households in India had air conditioning

28:26

at the same time. However, the popularity

28:29

of air conditioning is spreading, and it's already

28:31

approached the saturation point in some other

28:33

countries, including China, South Korea,

28:35

and Japan. In twenty ten,

28:37

fifty million air conditioning units were sold

28:40

in China alone. This has,

28:42

of course led to environmental concerns

28:44

as a global adoption of air conditioning starts

28:47

to align with what already happened in the United

28:49

States. According to some estimates,

28:51

electricity demand for air conditioning

28:54

could increase tenfold by the

28:56

air twenty fifty. That is on top

28:58

of concerns about refrigerator and their

29:00

effects on the environment. Listeners of

29:02

a certain age will probably remember concerns about

29:04

the chlorofluorocarbons like free

29:06

on, which were banned in the late nineteen eighties because

29:08

of their role in depleting the planet's ozone

29:11

layer. And then there's the fact that air

29:13

conditioners pump hot air out

29:15

and cool air in, so the air

29:18

just gets hotter around any building where air

29:20

conditioning is used, which then requires

29:22

more air conditioning. So in some

29:24

places architects and designers are looking

29:27

at ways to incorporate some of those elements

29:29

of vernacular architecture so that

29:31

it doesn't take quite so much electricity

29:33

and mechanical air conditioning to cool the place

29:36

off. The existence of

29:38

air conditioning has also had a huge

29:40

impact on so many

29:43

things, including architecture, human behavior,

29:45

and demographics, everything from

29:48

fewer premature deaths during heat

29:50

waves to the existence of computers

29:52

since their components can't really be manufactured

29:55

without temperature and dust control. The

29:57

advent of air conditioning has been credited

30:00

with people retiring to the South, particularly

30:02

to Florida. It's also been credited

30:05

with leading to more industrialization

30:07

and urbanizing parts of the American South.

30:10

There is still some debate about

30:12

correlation versus causation, but in

30:14

general, air conditioning has been cited as

30:17

one element in a massive

30:19

Southern population boom in the last

30:21

fifty years. As one example

30:23

that ties all of this together, during

30:25

the post World War II Baby boom, huge

30:28

numbers of white, middle class Americans

30:30

were buying houses in the suburbs. Many

30:33

of those newly designed houses were built to be

30:35

cooled through air conditioning. Particularly

30:38

popular in the region of the southern US

30:40

that's known as the Sun Belt was the ranch

30:42

house, one story flat,

30:44

often with a large picture window in the living room

30:46

but small, narrow windows elsewhere.

30:49

It had none of the vernacular design elements

30:51

that we talked about earlier meant to help a building

30:53

stay cool because it was meant to be

30:56

cooled with AC. And then there's

30:58

another trend that wraps back how

31:00

air conditioning really started out to help

31:03

industries. According to research

31:05

by economist William Nordhaus, around

31:07

the world, as a general trend, the

31:10

hotter the average temperature, the less

31:12

productive people are. In

31:14

the past, this trend has been used to prop

31:16

up racist stereotypes about people

31:18

from the hottest parts of the world.

31:21

But really there's just a lot of data

31:23

that being hot makes it harder

31:25

to be productive. Just

31:28

as one example, this summer

31:31

that we're recording this podcast, the Harvard

31:33

THH. Chan School of Public Health published

31:35

a study about how students who lived

31:37

in non air conditioned buildings

31:39

in Boston performed more poorly

31:42

on cognitive tests than their peers

31:44

who had air conditioning. So, at least

31:46

in theory, air conditioning or some method

31:49

of cooling makes countries with a really

31:51

hot climate more productive than

31:54

they could be without it. So it's still about

31:56

productivity and profitability as

31:58

much as it's about people's coming. The

32:01

two are kind of inseparable.

32:03

Really. Yeah, it's part

32:05

of how it all works.

32:12

Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.

32:15

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