Sing Praises To The Air!
Additional Photos
What is the most significant technical achievement since the beginning of mankind? At this time of the year, most of us in Borrego would probably vote for the invention of refrigeration!
Keeping cool has been a human preoccupation for millennia, but until the 20th century most efforts were ineffective. People tried everything from draping saturated mats in doorways to the installation of water-powered fans. The modern system—involving the exchange of hot, moist air for cool, dry air by way of a circulating refrigerant—was first used in industrial settings. Indeed, a North Carolina textile engineer named Stuart Cramer, impressed with how the latest system of controlling the heat and humidity in his plant improved the cloth fibers, coined the term “air conditioning” in 1906. Since then, comfort of cool is no longer considered a luxury but a fact of modern existence.
So, just for fun, let’s see what you know about this marvel of human ingenuity.
Did you know:
1. Leonardo da Vinci is credited with designing and building the first mechanical ventilating fan around 1500. Of course, it did not remotely resemble air conditioning as we know it but it made him very popular!
2. The first recorded attempt at an “air conditioner” is credited to Dr. John Gorrie (1803-1855), an American physician, in Apalachicola, Florida. During his practice in the 1830s, Dr. Gorrie created a machine that essentially blew air over a bucket of ice for cooling hospital rooms of patients suffering from malaria and yellow fever.
3. In 1881, when President James Garfield was dying, naval engineers constructed a box-like structure containing cloths saturated with melted ice water, where a fan blew hot air overhead. The good news: this contraption was able to lower a room by 20 degrees. The bad news: it consumed half a million pounds of ice in two months’ time and Garfield dyed anyway!
4. The original name for air conditioning was “Comfort Cooling” and the first comfort cooling system is said to have originated in 1902 for the New York Stock Exchange Building. A 300-ton system designed by Alfred Wolff, this system used free cooling provided by waste-steam operated refrigeration systems and it functioned successfully for 20 years.
5. The first true “Air Conditioning” system was installed in the Armour Building in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1904. This system was considered a modern day marvel as it allowed each room of the building to be individually controlled with a thermostat, making it also the first building to incorporate “zone” management—although they did not identify that as a selling feature at the time.
6. 1904 was also the year the first self-contained mechanical refrigerator was unveiled. It made its debut at the St. Louis World’s Fair and, trust me, it caught the attention of every red-blooded woman in attendance!
7. Twenty-five years later, in 1929, Frigidaire put the first residential room cooler on the market and, in so doing, began changing our lives forever. This unit used sulfur dioxide as the refrigerant and had to be placed outside or in the basement…but it got the job done!
8. Frigidaire followed up with its “Hot-Kold” (note the clever use of a “K” instead of a “C”—were they the first to think of that?!) year-round central air-conditioning system in 1931 for residential.
9. 1938 was the first year window air conditioners using Freon were introduced, this time marketed by Philco.
10. A year later, in 1939, Packard Motor Car Company offered the first air conditioning unit for an automobile, selling it as a whopping $274, or the equivalent of roughly $70,000 in today’s money. Clearly, it was a true luxury and now we could be cool, or kool, wherever we were!
Thankfully, for those of us who have chosen to live in places like Borrego, having the option to cool off in our homes and in our cars makes it possible to live here year ‘round. I know, for some, that is a sign of weakness and I regret being so faint of heart, but I couldn’t do it here in July, August and September, without my faithful air conditioning units. In fact, few things move me to the level of enthusiasm and sheer giddiness I feel when I flick that little toggle switch from AUTO to AIR come late May or early June. I am relieved to hear the compressor kick in right on cue and sigh a major sigh of relief when I feel that first gust of cool air come wafting down from the ceiling vent. Yeah…life is good!
Sing praises to the Air!
Sponsored
advertisement
Featured
Local Weather
| Local Weather Sponsored by: |
