The time is 10:13pm, the temperature is 34 degrees Celsius, and the humidity is somewhere between rain forest and gumbo. But step out of the sultry Texas night and into the Circle K convenience store, and suddenly it’s not summer.
The beer is cold, but so are the snacks. You can almost see your breath, though the young sales clerk seems not to notice. ”Is it just me,” she asks, ”or is it warm in here?”
Of course, it’s not just her. It’s all of us who dart from our air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned malls or offices or homes, who pull up blankets on July nights or enjoy the summer game in domed stadiums where no one ever breaks a sweat.
For all that, we thank YOU, Willis Haviland Carrier.
A hundred years ago on Wednesday, this young man – just a year out of Cornell University, paid $10 a week by Buffalo Forge Co. invented air conditioning.
The idea of cooling air was nothing new. Roman emperors brought snow down from the mountains to cool their gardens; in the 19th century, Dr. John Gorrie invented a method to keep malaria patients comfortable by blowing air over buckets of ice suspended from the ceiling.
But until Carrier, no system cooled, cleaned and dried the air. One of Buffalo Forge’s clients, the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographic and Publishing Co. in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, had a problem: The paper it used in its printing jobs, including the popular humour magazine Judge, was expanding and contracting in the heat and humidity. The printers were finding it impossible to align the ink.
So Carrier came up with a simple solution. If the plant was heated by blowing air through coils pumped full of steam, why not cool it by blowing air through coils full of cold water? Water in the air would condense on the coils, the way it does on a glass of iced tea in August; as a result, the air in the plant would be both cooler and drier.
On July 17, 1902, the printing plant was cooled for the first time, and the age of air conditioning began – though it wouldn’t be called that for four years, and for decades it could be found in few workplaces, and even fewer homes.
But air conditioning found a place in the new movie palaces of the age. At first vents were placed on the floor, and the drafts could be unpleasant.
Carrier put a new system with outlets in the ceiling of the Rivoli theater in New York in 1925; the marquee read, ”The Rivoli Cooled By Refrigeration Always 69 Degrees”.
Then came the department stores. Planes (United Airlines, 1936) and cars (Packard, 1939) followed, though automotive air conditioning was not an instant hit only 10 500 cars were sold with the option by 1953.
Congress was air conditioned in 1928 – allowing politicians to remain in session and make mischief all year long, grumbled writer Gore Vidal. In 1929, the White House was cooled to Herbert Hoover’s satisfaction, but Franklin D. Roosevelt hated the air conditioning and never turned it on.
It was only after World War II that great numbers of ordinary Americans began to live in air-conditioned homes.
In 1960, 12% of the nation’s homes were air conditioned; now, 80% are.
Air conditioning also has fostered the growth of warm southern cities like Phoenix and Houston and the construction of immense, glass-sheathed skyscrapers.
It has allowed astronauts to explore the moon.
The chlorofluorocarbons that long ago replaced water as refrigerants were blamed for damage to the Earth’s ozone layer, until the industry phased them out in the past decade.
Marsha Ackermann, author of the new book ”Cool Comfort: America’s Romance with Air-Conditioning,” says for some people, air conditioning is like cars and television – a modern invention that can isolate us.
In 1994, in Houston, some young people made news by turning off the air conditioning for just that reason, she says.
”I think that deserves the death penalty in Texas,” Ackermann says. – Sapa-AP