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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is production of iHeartRadio. Hello

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Speaker 1: and welcome to This Day in History Class, a show

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Speaker 1: for those interested in the big and small moments of history.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gay Bluesier, and in this episode, we're looking at

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Speaker 1: the story behind the invention of air conditioning, an economy

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Speaker 1: shaping invention that surprisingly wasn't designed with human comfort in mind.

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Speaker 1: The day was July seventeenth, nineteen oh two, mechanical engineer

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Speaker 1: Willis Carrier completed his design for what would become the

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Speaker 1: first modern air conditioner. His invention improved the health and

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Speaker 1: comfort of countless people, boosted global productivity, and fueled the

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Speaker 1: growth of countless industry trees that still power our economy today.

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Speaker 1: Finding a way to cool down in hot weather has

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Speaker 1: been on humanity's mind for a long time now. One

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Speaker 1: of the earliest solutions came from the ancient Roman emperor Ilagabolus,

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Speaker 1: who sent one thousand slaves into the mountains to collect

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Speaker 1: vast amounts of snow each year, which he then had

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Speaker 1: them pile up in his gardens. That way, when the

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Speaker 1: wind kicked up, the cooler air would blow inside his palace.

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Speaker 1: That approach clearly wouldn't have worked on a wide scale,

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Speaker 1: but the core concept was revived in the nineteenth century

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Speaker 1: minus the slavery, by a Boston entrepreneur named Frederick Tudor.

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Speaker 1: In winter, Tudor would harvest blocks of ice from frozen

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Speaker 1: New England lakes. Then he would pack the blocks in sawdust,

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Speaker 1: a natural form of insulation, and ship them to warmer

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Speaker 1: regions in the summer. The practice grew so popular that

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Speaker 1: when New England had a mild winter one year, there

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Speaker 1: was widespread panic over a potential ice famine that following summer.

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Speaker 1: Blowing air over blocks of ice and other cold materials

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Speaker 1: became the go to method for cooling a room in

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Speaker 1: hot weather, But just like with the Emperor's snow Mountain

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Speaker 1: back in Rome, the method required a lot of work

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Speaker 1: and a lot of ice, which made it expensive and impractical.

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Speaker 1: Air conditioning as we know it today got its start

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Speaker 1: in nineteen oh two, following the all important advent of electricity.

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Speaker 1: The first working model was the invention of Willis Haveland Carrier,

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Speaker 1: a young engineer at the Buffalo Forge Heating Company in

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Speaker 1: upstate New York. The sack at Willem's Printing plant in

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Speaker 1: Brooklyn had tasked Buffalo Forge with creating a system to

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Speaker 1: help control the climate inside its factory. The comfort of

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Speaker 1: the workers was incidental. The real goal was to control

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Speaker 1: the temperature and humidity inside the printing plant so that

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Speaker 1: the paper couldn't wrinkle and the different colored inks wouldn't

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Speaker 1: run together during printing. Buffalo Forge put Carrier in charge

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Speaker 1: of the project, and inspiration soon struck him. One foggy

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Speaker 1: day in nineteen o two, while waiting for a train,

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Speaker 1: he realized that dry air passing through water created the

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Speaker 1: fog all around him, and if he could invent a

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Speaker 1: machine that did something similar, he could effectively manufacture air

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Speaker 1: with any level of moisture he wanted. He got to

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Speaker 1: work on the design right away, and on July seventeenth,

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Speaker 1: nineteen o two, he completed the schematic drawings for his

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Speaker 1: invention to control humidity. The system Carrier devised worked on

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Speaker 1: the same principles that air conditioning does today. Air was

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Speaker 1: forced through the filter of a compressor and then pumped

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Speaker 1: over coils chilled by coolant. The resulting cold air was

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Speaker 1: then blown out into the room using a fan. Carrier

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Speaker 1: eventually switched from a piston driven compressor to a centrifugal chiller,

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Speaker 1: which made it possible to cool much larger spaces. Carrier's

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Speaker 1: system was installed in the Sacket Willems printing plant in

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Speaker 1: nineteen o three. It kept the plant's interior at a

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Speaker 1: constant and comfortable humidity of fifty five percent, a feat

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Speaker 1: that would have required one hundred and eight thousand pounds

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Speaker 1: of ice every day to replicate. Carrier's original model worked

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Speaker 1: wonders for his client, but it was still many years

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Speaker 1: before air conditioning made its way from printing plants to

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Speaker 1: family homes. The early machines were simply too big. With

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Speaker 1: that limitation in mind, Carrier and Buffalo Forge initially focused

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Speaker 1: on other industrial clients who had been plagued by humidity,

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Speaker 1: such as flour mills and the Gillette Corporation. Turns out,

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Speaker 1: moisture from humidity was just as bad for flour and

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Speaker 1: razor blades as it was for paper. Still, Carrier knew

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Speaker 1: his invention had wider applications than just quality control, so

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Speaker 1: four years later, in nineteen oh six, he started looking

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Speaker 1: at ways to add air conditioning to retail buildings and

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Speaker 1: other public spaces, not as a form of asset protection,

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Speaker 1: but as a comfort feature. He knew government buildings and

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Speaker 1: offices would be slower to adopt such a new technology,

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Speaker 1: so instead, Carrier made the wise decision to target playhouses

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Speaker 1: and movie theaters. Those kinds of venues normally shut down

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Speaker 1: during the summer months, as packing people into a crowded

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Speaker 1: room with no windows was not a great recipe for

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Speaker 1: summer fun. Until Carrier came along, the best option for

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Speaker 1: cooling a theater was to order lots of ice from

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Speaker 1: Frederick Tudor's New England Ice Racket. Some theaters used large

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Speaker 1: fans to blow air over the ice and help cool

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Speaker 1: the audience. The downside was that pollution was on the

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Speaker 1: rise in New England's lakes, so the damp air from

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Speaker 1: all that melting ice sometimes made the entire theater smell

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Speaker 1: like rotten eggs. Carrier's new device, which he cheerfully dubbed

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Speaker 1: the weather Maker, was an obvious upgrade, and plenty of

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Speaker 1: other businesses quickly took notice of that. By nineteen fifteen,

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Speaker 1: Carrier was running his own company, which supplied his patented

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Speaker 1: cooling systems to theaters, hotels, departments, stores, and eventually to

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Speaker 1: private homes. Some of Carrier's early high profile customers were

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Speaker 1: the US Congress, the White House and Madison Square Garden

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Speaker 1: in New York City. Many people's first exposure to air

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Speaker 1: conditioning came in the nineteen twenties, when movie theaters started

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Speaker 1: popping up all over the country. The cool comfort they

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Speaker 1: offered was advertised front and center on their marquees, almost

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Speaker 1: as big a draw as the movies themselves. The popularity

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Speaker 1: of going to the movies as a way to beat

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Speaker 1: the heat eventually gave rise to the summer blockbuster trend,

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Speaker 1: the most lucrative time of the year for the movie industry.

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Speaker 1: We don't generally think of air conditioning as a catalyst

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Speaker 1: for economic upheaval, but in the first half of the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century, that's exactly what it was. Air Conditioning increased

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Speaker 1: the productivity of just about every industry there is, simply

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Speaker 1: by making people's workplaces more comfortable. It also allowed for

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Speaker 1: the creation of taller, larger structures, such as skyscrapers and

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Speaker 1: shopping malls, buildings which would have been unbearably hot and

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Speaker 1: stuffy if not for air conditioning. All these years later,

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Speaker 1: air conditioning remains good for business. Shopping malls and movie

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Speaker 1: theaters may not be the big draws they once were,

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Speaker 1: but consider online shopping. All the goods we buy online

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Speaker 1: come from warehouses, which would be just as unbearably hot

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Speaker 1: as skyscrapers or malls without massive air conditioners to keep

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Speaker 1: them cool for both the workers and the merchandise. And

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Speaker 1: of course, computers stop working all together if they get

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Speaker 1: too hot or humid, so without air conditioning, willn't be

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Speaker 1: able to maintain the vast server farms that make online

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Speaker 1: shopping and the Internet itself possible. When home model AC

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Speaker 1: units started being produced en mass in the post war

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, they forever changed how and where we live.

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Speaker 1: We already talked about movies, but think about television. Would

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Speaker 1: the medium have ever become such a popular pastime if

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Speaker 1: we weren't able to watch it in our pleasantly chilled

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Speaker 1: living rooms. The growth of Sun Belt cities was also

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Speaker 1: a direct result of the invention of air conditioning, as

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Speaker 1: it finally made the regions stifling hot weather seem manageable.

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Speaker 1: In fact, the states that lie within the Sun Belt,

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Speaker 1: that's Georgia, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and southern California all

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Speaker 1: experienced above average population booms during the second half of

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Speaker 1: the twentieth century. The same period when air conditioning became

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Speaker 1: a common fixture in people's homes and offices. It was

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Speaker 1: a pretty big boom two as between nineteen fifty and

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Speaker 1: the year two thousand, the Sun Belt share of the

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Speaker 1: national population shot up from twenty eight percent to forty percent.

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Speaker 1: Willis Haviland Carrier died at the start of that boom

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Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty, but thanks to his invention, the world

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Speaker 1: he left behind was a much cooler place to live.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Luesier and hopefully you now know a little

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Speaker 1: more about history today than you did yesterday. You can

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Speaker 1: send your feedback directly by writing to This Day at

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Speaker 1: iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays and Ben Hackett

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Speaker 1: for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening.

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Speaker 1: I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day

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Speaker 1: in History class. The pick, the patter, Pick, the ber