WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Air Conditioning 0:00:02.560 --> 0:00:05.840 Happy Saturday. Not too long ago, we had an episode 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:09.480 on Augustine Daily and we talked about the installation of 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:13.039 air conditioning at his Fifth Avenue Theater in New York. 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:15.760 Not long after that episode came out, we got an 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:18.520 email from listener Charlotte asking if we had ever done 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:22.919 an episode on the history of air conditioning, and I thought, hey, 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:25.680 I meant to pull that out as a Saturday classic 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:29.520 to run after the Augustine Daily episode, but I forgot 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:34.440 so here it is now weeks later, Thanks Charlotte. This 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:37.760 episode originally came out on August twenty ninth, twenty eighteen. 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:43.680 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:54.440 of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:58.880 Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. It's August, although by the 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:01.440 time this podcast comes out I could possibly be September. 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:04.400 Not quite sure when this one's gonna drop yet. And also, 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:08.120 it's hot. That's what August means usually for us, at least, 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:11.039 yeah for us for sure. I started working on this 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:13.080 episode on one of those days when I woke up 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:16.200 and it was already eighty two degrees inside my apartment. 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:19.640 It is eighty six degrees in my little studio right now, 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.320 I am sitting with a cold pack draped over my chair. 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:26.840 So I decided we should talk about the history of 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:31.440 air conditioning. And sorry to our Southern Hemisphere friends who 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:34.319 are always getting the episodes in which I'm complaining that 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:37.600 it's hot, and so We're going to talk about ice 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:44.040 or air conditioning or whatever. When it's winter there. I 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:46.280 could go there and complain about winter while you're here 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:48.320 and complain about hot because I love the heat, but 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:53.920 that cold is not for me. So about a year ago, 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:56.800 we did an episode on Frederick Tudor, who cut ice 0:01:56.880 --> 0:02:00.160 out of ponds in Massachusetts in winter and then turn 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:03.760 that into a globally traded commodity. In that episode, we 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:05.680 talked about some of the ways that people had been 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:08.560 making ice and refrigerating things in warmer parts of the 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:11.480 world before the establishment of the ice trade and the 0:02:11.520 --> 0:02:16.040 development of mechanical refrigeration. Things like people in the Indian 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:20.280 subcontinent using earthenware vessels as evaporative coolers to make kind 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:24.400 of a semi frozen slush, or using saltpeter infused water 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:28.240 to chill bottles of beverages. Similarly, people all over the 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:31.240 world had figured out ways to keep themselves at least 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:35.000 relatively cool for millennia before the invention of air conditioning, 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:37.440 and a lot of these methods are still in use 0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:40.960 in one way or another today. The most obvious starting 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:44.680 point is the fan. People have probably fanned themselves with 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:47.800 their hands or with relatively flat objects for about as 0:02:47.840 --> 0:02:50.960 long as people have existed, but in terms of objects 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:55.160 created specifically as fans, we know that goes back at 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:59.640 least five thousand years. We have examples of hand fans 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:04.000 from numerous ancient civilizations all over the world. The earliest 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:07.079 fans were fixed or rigid, and made of all kinds 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:12.400 of feathers, fronds, textiles, and other materials. The first folding 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:15.880 fans were probably developed in either Japan or China. There 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:18.520 are examples from both that are about the same age, 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:21.640 and both nations have their own lore about the development 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:25.040 of the folding fan. Of course, fans themselves have their 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:28.640 own history, with all kinds of mythology and symbolism and 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:32.000 etiquette and art and culture woven in, and a lot 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:35.920 of culture's fans have also had religious or ceremonial uses 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:38.600 as well. And that's on top of all the variation 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:41.400 in the materials that fans have been made of and 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:45.000 how they've been designed and constructed. We probably, if we 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:47.840 felt inclined, could do a whole episode just on fans. 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:51.400 Only if we talk about Star Trek and the fan dance, 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:57.120 then I'm in a lot of the earliest personal cooling 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:01.240 methods were built around the fan, people either fanning themselves 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:04.200 or having a servant or an enslaved person do it 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:07.440 for them. In places that were both hot and dry, 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:11.200 people used fans to force air through dampened screens or mats, 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:14.119 which would both humidify the air and cool the air 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:18.000 as water evaporated. In places where it was hot and damp, 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:20.520 people were more likely to use fans to move air 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:23.880 over ice, although that still made the room even more humid, 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:26.560 and depending on where that ice came from, it might 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:30.600 also make the room smell like gross pond water. After 0:04:30.640 --> 0:04:33.760 President James Garfield was shot in eighteen eighty one, his 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:37.240 doctors used a variation on this fan and ice method 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:40.000 to try to keep him cool, and that used almost 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:43.680 five hundred pounds of ice per day. Leonardo da Vinciti 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:47.600 developed a water powered fan in about fifteen hundred, and 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:51.040 mechanically driven fans powered by things like hand cranks were 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:55.080 developed about the same time. The first electric fan was 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:58.960 developed by Crocker and Curtis Electric Motor Company in eighteen 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:03.120 eighty two. That in eighteen eighty four, William Whiteley developed 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:06.560 the all Weather Eye, which was a fan that attached 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.640 to the axle of a carriage, so when the carriage 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:12.760 was moving, the fan turned and it forced air over 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:15.880 a block of ice that was mounted under the passenger area, 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:19.520 sort of air conditioning the inside of the carriage. That's 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:23.560 pretty ingenious. There are also all kinds of architectural features 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:27.080 all over the world intended to keep people cooler. Before 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:31.000 industrialization and the creation of air conditioning, most people lived 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:33.800 in buildings that were adapted to where they lived. They 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:37.240 used local materials and building techniques which were suited to 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:40.040 the needs of the climate and the landscape. The whole 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:45.039 idea is summed up as vernacular architecture. Vernacular architecture is 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.440 absolutely full of ways to deal with heat and humidity, 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:51.320 and there are so many that we cannot possibly name 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:54.560 them all, just like we cannot possibly name every variation 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:57.760 on the fan. But here are some examples. People on 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:00.840 coasts oriented their homes to catch this sea breeze through 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:05.320 the windows. Porches gave people an outdoor, semi sheltered place 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:08.440 to go when the house got too hot, and sleeping 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:11.279 porches had bunks or hammocks already there for when it 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:13.080 was just too hot to possibly go to sleep in 0:06:13.120 --> 0:06:17.560 the house. Thick walls, high ceilings, and large windows have 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:22.760 insulated buildings while also allowing air circulation. Shady courtyards and 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:26.039 fountains of offered respite from the heat, and in places 0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:28.600 where it's hot in the day and cool at night, 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:32.839 thick walls made from mud or adobe absorb heat during 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:35.040 the day and to keep the inside cooler, and then 0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:37.960 release it at night to keep the inside warmer. Then, 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:40.520 of course there's just planting trees to shade the buildings 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:44.520 from the sun. In the southeastern United States, one common 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:47.640 design was the dog trot house. This was a house 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:50.960 with two halves separated by a roofed breezeway in between, 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:55.760 which usually also connected a front and back porch. Usually 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:58.120 the kitchen was on one side of the dog trot 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:00.680 while the sleeping area was on the other, so you 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:03.360 weren't heating up your bedroom while you were cooking your food. 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:07.000 Dog trot houses were often built upon bricks or stones 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:09.840 rather than resting on a foundation or the ground, and 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:12.440 that allowed air to circulate under the house as well. 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:15.760 And sometimes these are also called possum trot houses. And 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:19.160 the same basic design is still used in some places today. 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:22.560 My sister in law lives in a house just like this. Yeah, 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:24.760 there are also, I mean there are historic ones that 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:28.320 still stand in newly built houses that are still following 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:30.680 that same basic design. I remember when I was in 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:33.440 college there was one at the botanical gardens next door 0:07:33.480 --> 0:07:35.880 to the campus where we like to go sit around 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:39.880 and read. Step wells are a way of dealing with 0:07:39.920 --> 0:07:43.880 the heat in very arid countries, especially on the Indian subcontinent. 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:47.200 This is a pool of water very very deep underground 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:50.640 which people would reach down an incredibly long spiral or 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:54.760 zigzag staircase. These pools had to be that deep underground 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:56.760 because that's how far down you had to go to 0:07:56.760 --> 0:07:59.600 get to the water table. They were used as a 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:03.680 water but then also having such a deep, dark underground 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:06.680 shaft gave people a place to retreat out of the heat. 0:08:07.040 --> 0:08:10.720 Sometimes stepwells were designed to serve as very large gathering 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:14.600 places with intricate stairways and terraces, basically lots of places 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:17.480 for people to go down there and chill out. A 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:20.800 lot of these stepwells fell into disuse as human activity 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:24.640 lowered the water table, either gradually filling with trash or 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:28.760 being taken over by animals. The British Empire also destroyed 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:31.480 a lot of them under the idea that they were unsanitary, 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:34.400 and this was kind of ironic since it was extremely 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:37.680 fashionable for British people to complain about how miserable the 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:41.840 heat was in colonial India. Today, though, some stepwells are 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:44.800 being restored and reopened as water sources, and the same 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:48.199 principle has been used to design modern buildings that require 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:52.400 less energy to cool. Wind catchers were common in Persian 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:55.280 architecture starting thousands of years ago, and a lot of 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:58.720 them are still standing and still working today. This is 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:01.960 essentially a window tower that's built to take advantage of 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:05.559 the prevailing winds, so exactly how the tower is designed, 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:08.880 how many windows it has, and which direction it faces 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:12.320 depends on where it's being built. When the wind blows 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:15.040 through a windcatcher, it draws hot air up out of 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:18.240 the house. Sometimes there's also a reservoir of water or 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:20.680 a very deep well inside the house, so as the 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:24.080 hot air moves out, moist, cooler air is pulled up 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:27.440 from below. A similar design was also part of ancient 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:32.600 Egyptian architecture. So vernacular architecture is just full of things 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:35.640 like this, and people living in hot places have also 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:39.120 adapted their behavior, like the siesta during the hottest part 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:42.599 of the day. But as areas have adopted air conditioning, 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:46.480 these traditional elements have tended to disappear as people instead 0:09:46.559 --> 0:09:49.800 design buildings that are going to be mechanically cooled. And 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:52.040 we're going to start talking about that in some detail 0:09:52.120 --> 0:10:04.400 after we first pause for a little sponsor break. Modern 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:07.120 air conditioning was developed in the United States, and the 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:10.440 United States has adopted it much faster than the rest 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:13.080 of the world, so the next stretch of this show 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:16.320 is going to be pretty US centric. The first person 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:18.720 in the United States to write down some thoughts for 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:22.600 creating a large scale way to cool places was John 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:25.640 Gory in eighteen forty two. He wrote about wanting to 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:29.800 use mechanical condensation to quote counteract the evils of high 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:34.520 temperature and improve the condition of our cities. He speculated 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:37.679 about a massive city that could use one machine to 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:40.400 cool off the entire place, as well as to cool 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:44.320 individual buildings. It's not clear whether he ever made a 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:47.640 working prototype of this air conditioner he had in mind, 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:50.520 but he did create a refrigerator that could make ice. 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:54.840 He had this working at the US Marine Hospital in Apalachicola, Florida, 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:58.160 in eighteen forty four, and he patented it in eighteen 0:10:58.240 --> 0:11:01.720 fifty one. That ice was put to use in conjunction 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:04.600 with fans to try to keep patients with malaria and 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:08.880 yellow fever cool. By eighteen eighty, people were using fans 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:11.120 and ice together to try to cool buildings on a 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:15.160 much larger scale. That year, New York's Madison Square Theater 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:18.880 was using four tons of ice per day to try 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:21.480 to cool the theater in the summer. Before trying that 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:24.080 it would pretty much just not had shows in the summer. 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:28.480 There's some overlap in the development of refrigeration and air conditioning, 0:11:28.640 --> 0:11:31.160 and in the late eighteen eighties people were also using 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:35.720 refrigeration to try to cool whole rooms. Pipes were used 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:39.239 to carry a refrigerant from a central station out to customers, 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:42.839 and this central station refrigeration was mainly used to cool 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:47.120 whole rooms for things like meat packing and cold storage. 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:50.600 A few businesses did try to put central station refrigeration 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:54.480 to use basically as air conditioning for people's comfort, though. 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:58.480 In eighteen ninety one, a restaurant called Ice Palace opened 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:02.280 in Saint Louis, Missouri that used central station refrigeration to 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:05.000 keep the whole building cool, and it also decorated the 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:08.440 place with lots of pictures of wintry scenes. Over the 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:12.280 next couple of decades, several people started designing the systems 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:16.600 that evolved into modern air conditioning. Alfred Wolf created cooling 0:12:16.640 --> 0:12:19.080 systems for a number of buildings in the late nineteenth 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:22.840 and early twentieth centuries. In eighteen eighty nine, he created 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:26.360 a ventilation system for Carnegie Hall or Carnegie if you 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:29.520 liked that pronunciation, but most people except Carnegie Hall as 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:33.440 the pronunciation on that one. These included racks for blocks 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:36.679 of ice, and that same year he used chilling coils 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:39.240 to cool the air in a dissecting room at Cornell 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:43.199 Medical College, which seems like an excellent venue for air conditioning. 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:46.480 In nineteen oh two, he created a fan driven system 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:49.040 for the New York stock Exchange that cost one hundred 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:52.400 and thirty thousand dollars, and it could heat and cool 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:56.520 the building. In cold weather, steam boilers added heat and humidity, 0:12:56.520 --> 0:12:58.960 and in hot weather, the air moved over coils that 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:02.439 were filled with a cooling brine to cool and dehumidify. 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:06.760 At about the same time, engineer Stuart Kramer was working 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:10.240 in textile mills in the South, especially in the winter. 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:13.040 That air in these mills would become very dry, which 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:16.480 was a problem. Cotton thread is a lot more brittle 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:19.600 and likely to snap when it's too dry. Wool is 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:23.319 a lot easier to work when it's properly moist. Plus 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:26.200 static electricity when working with a bunch of textiles in 0:13:26.240 --> 0:13:30.720 too dry air, could be just unbearable. Kramer developed systems 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:35.040 that combined ventilation with humidification. They basically circulated the air 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:38.480 while also releasing a very fine mist of water. The 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:41.400 word that he coined for this combination of temperature and 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:46.000 humidity control was air conditioning. Kramer was awarded a patent 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:49.880 for his air conditioning system in nineteen oh six. Concurrently 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:53.840 with Wolf and Kramer, Willis Carrier was working at Buffalo 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:57.640 Forge Company and the company made things like blowers and bellows, 0:13:57.720 --> 0:13:59.880 and he had been made head of its new ex 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:04.200 experimental engineering department. Those three men that we've just talked about, 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:06.319 his is probably the name that at least rings a 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:10.360 bell because Carrier is still associated with air conditioning. We 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:12.840 just got a new air conditioner installed and it is 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:19.480 a Carrier unit. So. Second, Wilhelm's Lithographic and Publishing Company 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:23.479 in Brooklyn, New York, was one of Buffalo Forged Company's clients, 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:27.520 and they were having a problem with humidity. Variations in 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:30.440 the humidity affected the paper that was running through their 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:34.000 printing presses. Sometimes this would cause the ink to bleed 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:36.880 or to smear, or for the paper to visibly warp. 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:40.040 But a bigger problem was that they were printing in color. 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:44.400 Colored inks went onto the paper one layer at the time. 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:48.520 Even a slight difference in humidity affected the paper enough 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:51.400 that the colors would be out of register. Those layers 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:54.280 wouldn't line up correctly. It would not look like a 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:58.400 cleanly printed color document. It would look like overlapping out 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:02.120 of the lines, messed up color. I'm thinking about the 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:05.400 various episodes we have done about artists and their work 0:15:05.520 --> 0:15:09.880 getting printed cheaply, and I'm betting probably these problems were 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:13.440 part of how they ended up such a mess. So 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:16.560 Carrier developed a system that moved air over a series 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:20.920 of coils that were cooled with compressed ammonia. Moisture condensed 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:23.440 out of the air and onto the coils, drying it out, 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:26.520 which also had the side effect of cooling the air off. 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:31.520 He ultimately developed a cooling, dehumidification, and air circulation system 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:35.120 that maintained a temperature of seventy degrees fahrenheit in winter 0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:38.600 or eighty degrees in summer, and a relative humidity that 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:42.720 was a consistent fifty five percent. This was Carrier's first 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:45.560 attempt at endoor climate control, and he went on to 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:49.360 be awarded numerous patents within the field. The first one 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:51.840 was issued in nineteen oh six that was US Patent 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:55.680 number eighth eight eight nine seven apparatus or treading Air. 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:59.680 It described a process for forcing air through a spray 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:01.920 of water and then through a set of baffles to 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:05.080 remove any kind of pollutants or impurities, before then heating 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:08.840 or cooling it and adding or removing humidity. In late 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:13.240 nineteen oh seven, Buffalo Forge Company established Carrier Air Conditioning 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:17.160 Company of America as a subsidy. Willis Carrier was vice 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:21.000 president and chief engineer. Among the first clients were flour 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:24.680 mills and Jellette. Too much humidity was causing the razor 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:28.160 blades to rust, and in nineteen eleven Carrier gave an 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:32.600 address on his rational psychometric formulae at the American Society 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:36.400 of Mechanical Engineers. This was also published in the Society's journal, 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:40.640 and the printed version started quote. A specialized engineering field 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:44.600 has recently developed, technically known as air conditioning or the 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:49.280 artificial regulation of atmospheric moisture. The application of this new 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:52.800 art to many varied industries has been demonstrated to be 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:57.000 of greatest economic importance. When applied to the blast furnace, 0:16:57.080 --> 0:16:59.880 that has increased the net profit in the production of 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:03.840 pig iron from fifty cents to seventy cents per ton, 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:06.359 and in the textile mill it has increased the output 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:09.520 from five to fifteen percent, at the same time greatly 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:13.200 improving the quality and the hygienic conditions surrounding the operative. 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:18.159 And many other industries such as lithographing, the manufacture of 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:22.600 candy bread, high explosives and photographic films, and the drying 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:27.919 and preparing of delicate hygroscopic materials such as macaroni and tobacco. 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:33.359 The question of humidity is equally important. While air conditioning 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:37.119 has never been properly applied to coal mines, the author 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:40.679 is convinced that if this were made compulsory, the greater 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:45.520 number of mine explosions would be prevented. The paper goes 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:49.720 on to detail all kinds of formulas about temperature, humidity, 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:53.399 and dew point, how they're interrelated, how they can be adjusted, 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.359 and what the effect of those adjustments would be. So 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:00.000 that introduction to the paper and the paper itself highlight 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.960 a couple of things. One is that initially air conditioning 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:07.000 had a slightly different meaning than it does today. Today 0:18:07.000 --> 0:18:10.760 we most associate air conditioning with keeping things cool and 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:15.640 not too humid. Another is that, almost without exception, it 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:19.959 was not about the workers' comfort. It was about the 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:23.120 products they were making and the temperature and humidity needs 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:25.600 of the materials and equipment they were working with, in 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:27.800 order to make them more productive and to make the 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:30.879 business more profitable. You can be hot and sweaty, but 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:35.200 the paper cannot correct. We're going to get into how 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:38.920 air conditioning finally became a household commodity after we first 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:51.160 paused for a little sponsor break in the early nineteen hundreds. 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:54.919 The general public didn't get to experience much air conditioning 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:57.520 in the United States unless it was something that was 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:00.920 being employed at their work to make their work were profitable. 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:04.320 The Saint Louis World's Fair used mechanical cooling at the 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:08.159 Missouri State Building in nineteen oh four. Roughly twenty million 0:19:08.240 --> 0:19:10.400 people attended the fair, and for a lot of them 0:19:10.440 --> 0:19:13.879 this was the first ever experience they had with air conditioning. 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:17.600 Home air conditioning was still way out of reach. The 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:21.080 first home air conditioner was installed in nineteen fourteen at 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:24.879 the Charles Gates Mansion in Minneapolis, and it's not clear 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:27.399 whether or not that air conditioner was ever actually used 0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:29.680 because no one was living in the mansion at the time. 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:33.480 That same year, Buffalo Forge Company decided to pull out 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.280 of the air conditioning business. Willis Carrier and some of 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:40.000 his colleagues founded Carrier Engineering Corporation the following year, with 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:44.040 Carrier as its president. Still at this point, air conditioning 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:47.320 was mainly focused on industry and not comfort, and the 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:50.480 availability of air conditioning meant that factories were being opened 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:53.280 in places where the climate had not been very conducive 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:57.119 to it before that. Industrial systems did sometimes have a 0:19:57.160 --> 0:20:00.000 side effect of making things more comfortable for workers, though. 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:03.879 For example, the use of air conditioning in tobacco processing 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:06.840 kept the tobacco leaves at the right humidity level, but 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:09.119 it also really cut down on the amount of dust 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:12.120 that the workers were subjected to. There are, also, of course, 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:16.320 other cases where it was the opposite, where this new 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:19.320 air conditioning system would make it feel to employees like 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:21.080 it was cold and damp, and they would want to 0:20:21.080 --> 0:20:23.320 open the windows, and if they opened the windows, that 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:25.680 would ruin the entire point of having had this air 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:28.680 conditioning in the first place. It was in the nineteen 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:32.680 twenties that people started experiencing air conditioning that was specifically 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:35.959 installed to make them more comfortable while also still being 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:41.360 all about profitability. Because this was at movie theaters. There 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:44.639 had been theater cooling systems that combined ice blocks and 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.600 fans before this, but they often weren't all that effective. 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:50.200 They might wind up with some parts of the theater 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:52.919 being cold and damp while others were hot and damp. 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:58.240 Carrier Engineering Corporation installed the first modern air conditioning system 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:02.240 at a movie theater, Metropolitan Theater in Los Angeles in 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:06.040 nineteen twenty two, and this was the start of three 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:10.920 huge trends. Number one, air conditioned movie theaters. Number two 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:15.359 movie theaters heavily advertising their air conditioning, and number three 0:21:15.960 --> 0:21:18.840 big movies coming out in the summer when everybody would 0:21:18.880 --> 0:21:20.800 be going to the movies to get out of the heat. 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:23.720 By the start of World War Two, most of the 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:26.960 movie theaters in the southern United States had air conditioning, 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:30.119 and the US isn't the only place where movie theaters 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:32.720 were the first public buildings to be air conditioned. The 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:35.280 first public building to be air conditioned in Hong Kong 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:39.280 was King Cinema that happened in nineteen thirty one. After 0:21:39.520 --> 0:21:42.720 movie theaters, the next public buildings to be air conditioned 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:46.399 in the United States were mostly large department stores, especially 0:21:46.480 --> 0:21:50.360 in the South. Smaller stores followed, and then came office buildings, 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:54.800 with the first air conditioned offices often being banks. The 0:21:54.960 --> 0:21:58.120 United States government started air conditioning some of its buildings 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:01.480 in the late nineteen twenties. The House of Representatives chamber 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:04.080 was air conditioned in nineteen twenty eight, and then the 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:06.879 Senate in nineteen twenty nine, and then the White House 0:22:06.880 --> 0:22:10.159 and Executive Building in nineteen thirty. The Supreme Court was 0:22:10.200 --> 0:22:13.159 air conditioned in nineteen thirty one. There had been some 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:17.520 debate about whether these systems should be installed, Even though Washington, 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:20.800 DC summers are famously punishing in terms of the heat 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:24.760 and humidity. There were worries that people would see legislators 0:22:24.760 --> 0:22:27.720 and Supreme Court justices as weak if they were going 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:32.520 to work in comfortable air conditioned buildings. Over these same years, 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:37.240 Carrier and other engineers were continuing to refine air conditioning technology. 0:22:37.560 --> 0:22:41.840 Has included more efficient compressors for the refrigerant and refrigerants 0:22:41.880 --> 0:22:45.760 themselves that were safer to use. That compressed ammonia that 0:22:45.880 --> 0:22:49.560 was being used in the earliest air conditioners was extremely toxic. 0:22:50.119 --> 0:22:54.639 What breathing ammonia air isn't good for me? Even so, 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:58.200 by the nineteen twenties, home air conditioning was still pretty rare, 0:22:58.359 --> 0:23:01.080 unless a person was perhaps so healthy that they could 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:04.399 afford to install one at their unoccupied mansion in Minnesota. 0:23:05.080 --> 0:23:08.200 But that started to change as corporations started to develop 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:12.440 more compact and affordable models. Brigid Air debuted a room 0:23:12.480 --> 0:23:16.560 cooler in nineteen twenty nine. In nineteen thirty one, HH 0:23:16.600 --> 0:23:19.840 Schultz and JQ. Sherman launched an early version of the 0:23:19.880 --> 0:23:23.600 window air conditioner that was too expensive to actually be workable. 0:23:24.400 --> 0:23:27.840 The Thorn room air conditioner came out in nineteen thirty two, 0:23:28.320 --> 0:23:31.199 and most of today's window air conditioners still look a 0:23:31.240 --> 0:23:35.520 lot like it. Yeah, the window air conditioning technology has 0:23:35.600 --> 0:23:41.480 not changed all that much since this happened. Hotels had 0:23:41.520 --> 0:23:45.320 started installing air conditioning not long after movie theaters did, 0:23:45.320 --> 0:23:47.320 but at first it was only in the lobbies and 0:23:47.359 --> 0:23:51.280