Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our
Speaker 1: exploration of the invention of air conditioning. Now, in the
Speaker 1: last episode, we focused on a lot of ancient techniques
Speaker 1: for versions of passive cooling, and some of these involved
Speaker 1: like fans, circulation of air on the body, or designing
Speaker 1: buildings to increase circulation of air. Some involved chilling air
Speaker 1: by passing it through like underground channels of cold water
Speaker 1: to particularly ingenious solution information persia. But today we're going
Speaker 1: to be getting into the modern science and chemistry of
Speaker 1: air conditioning. Yeah, because, as we discussed in the last episode,
Speaker 1: all these various techniques of the past, they were they
Speaker 1: all ranged from like mild to moderate in their effects,
Speaker 1: and when used together, you know, they could imp prove
Speaker 1: the quality of life for the individuals that we're living
Speaker 1: with them. But modern air conditioning, as we'll explore, was
Speaker 1: a huge game changer. Yeah. Now, this is going to
Speaker 1: be one of those episodes where we can't name a
Speaker 1: single person as the undisputed inventor of modern air conditioning. Instead,
Speaker 1: I think what we see is a lot of different
Speaker 1: engineers and inventors at different times coming up with new
Speaker 1: versions and variations of cooling and refrigeration technology. So it's
Speaker 1: going to be inevitable that we're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to talk about all of the people who contributed
Speaker 1: some important early experiment or design that led to modern
Speaker 1: refrigeration and air conditioning. Instead, we're going to be focusing
Speaker 1: on a few highlights we found interesting, and likewise, we
Speaker 1: tend we're going to discuss some things that are more
Speaker 1: refrigeration based in the technology, but where we're focusing mostly
Speaker 1: on air conditioning. And yet at the same time, the
Speaker 1: history of these technologies is kind of in they're kind
Speaker 1: of interwoven with one another because they're they're both attempting
Speaker 1: to do a very similar thing, and that is to
Speaker 1: take a warm substance, be it uh, some water or
Speaker 1: a certain body of air and making them cooler or
Speaker 1: making them absolutely cold. And in many cases, modern air
Speaker 1: conditioners and modern refrigerators work on the same principles. Not
Speaker 1: in every case, but in a lot of cases they do. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so the more I thought about this, the more
Speaker 1: I thought it would make sense to start with a brief,
Speaker 1: simplified explanation of how modern air conditioning generally works, and
Speaker 1: then we can after that go back in time and
Speaker 1: work our way up to it with some of these
Speaker 1: interesting stories about early stabs at it. So, as we
Speaker 1: mentioned in the last episode, there are multiple ways to
Speaker 1: cool the air in a room or cool the people
Speaker 1: in a room, but the most common method today uses
Speaker 1: a system of hollow coils filled with a fluid called
Speaker 1: a refrigerant, which is usually something chosen because as a
Speaker 1: low boiling point, meaning it changes from a liquid to
Speaker 1: a gas at a low temperature, and the fluid in
Speaker 1: this coil system flows constantly in a circuit that takes
Speaker 1: it back and forth between the inside and the outside
Speaker 1: of your house or whatever building or space you're trying
Speaker 1: to cool, converting back and forth between a liquid and
Speaker 1: a gas and carrying heat with it one way as
Speaker 1: it goes. So so the whole way and air conditioner works.
Speaker 1: The simple version is is just using this refrigerant to
Speaker 1: absorb heat from the air in your house and then
Speaker 1: dump it outside. And I'm not going to get into
Speaker 1: super technical chemistry or anything like that. We're just giving
Speaker 1: you the cliffs notes version here, so the cliffs notes
Speaker 1: version is when when you got this fluid the refrigerant,
Speaker 1: it's in a cold liquid form. It flows through this
Speaker 1: coil on the inside of your house known as the
Speaker 1: evaporator coil, and these coils get they get that there's
Speaker 1: a blower motor that blows the air over them really fast,
Speaker 1: and this causes these cold coils to absorb heat from
Speaker 1: the warm air inside your house and cool that air off.
Speaker 1: In the process, the heat from the air is going
Speaker 1: into the coils and then the nice cold air of
Speaker 1: course that the results from this blows out your ace
Speaker 1: events and it's just it's just now the indoor air
Speaker 1: that has been nice and dehumidified and cooled off by
Speaker 1: passing over these coils. The heat from the warm air
Speaker 1: inside your house heats up this fluid inside the coils
Speaker 1: and converts it from a liquid into a gas. And
Speaker 1: the air in your house can do this because of
Speaker 1: the refrigerant. Again, it's got a really low boiling point,
Speaker 1: so it's very easy to convert this liquid into a gas.
Speaker 1: This is something we see commonly in many early experiments
Speaker 1: with with refrigeration and with air conditioning is they find
Speaker 1: some kind of chemical like ether like alcohol that has
Speaker 1: a low boiling point, so it's easy to cause this evaporation.
Speaker 1: As we know from the last episode, evaporation sucks energy
Speaker 1: out of the surroundings. It's an energy hungry process and
Speaker 1: so it cools off everything around it. But now you've
Speaker 1: had these coils full of refrigerants that have absorbed the
Speaker 1: heat energy from the air in your house, and that
Speaker 1: heat energy has to go somewhere, right, It can't just disappear.
Speaker 1: It's got to be dumped. So the fluid then blows
Speaker 1: outside and somewhere along the way here. Often, if you've
Speaker 1: got like a you know, an outdoor unit, uh, it
Speaker 1: will go through a compressor, and that compressor will be
Speaker 1: in the outdoor unit, and the compressor is powered by
Speaker 1: a mechanical device that forcibly smashes that vapor and increases
Speaker 1: its pressure by using electrically powered components to reduce the volume,
Speaker 1: smashes it down, and then this pressurized refrigerant flows through
Speaker 1: condenser coils. These are in the unit outside the house
Speaker 1: or in the part of the air conditioner that's sticking outside,
Speaker 1: which are another set of coils exposed to the outside air.
Speaker 1: And this of course, it has another fan that rapidly
Speaker 1: blows the outside air over these coils, so the outside
Speaker 1: air rapidly absorbs the heat from the hot compressed refrigerant
Speaker 1: inside the coils. The heat gets just dumped out into
Speaker 1: the air outside, and this allows the refrigerant to cool
Speaker 1: off and condense back down into a liquid. And then finally,
Speaker 1: before the refrigerant can go through the evaporator coils inside again,
Speaker 1: it passes through a device called an expansion valve, which
Speaker 1: lowers the pressure that the compressor forced into it. So
Speaker 1: now you're back to what you started with. You've got
Speaker 1: this low boiling point liquid that can again be exposed
Speaker 1: to the air inside your house. Blowing that air over
Speaker 1: it really fast with a fan and it cools the
Speaker 1: air down and removes humidity from it in the process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you lay it all out, it it's a it's
Speaker 1: the celaborate process. I mean, we see again it's easy
Speaker 1: to take air conditioning for granted when it is working. Um,
Speaker 1: but it does remind me how when when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, we would go to my my grandfather's house
Speaker 1: and he he had window units in you know, the
Speaker 1: major rooms of the of the house. And when one
Speaker 1: was not was was not functioning. He was a superhanded guy,
Speaker 1: so he would take it out of the window and
Speaker 1: he would take it apart and repair it and tinker
Speaker 1: with it. And I remember at the time just marveling
Speaker 1: at all the things that seemed to be going on
Speaker 1: inside of that air conditioning um and he was able
Speaker 1: to patch it up and get it back on the
Speaker 1: window and functioning again. Yeah, it is weird. I tried,
Speaker 1: Like it's hard. I remember when I was younger not
Speaker 1: understanding how air conditioning worked and being kind of amazed
Speaker 1: by it, and and I even remember having it explained
Speaker 1: to me and like just in not clicking. And I
Speaker 1: gotta admit, when we were preparing for this episode, I
Speaker 1: spent a long time like looking at the diagrams and
Speaker 1: trying to hack at it and make sure, like, okay, am,
Speaker 1: I sure I'm understanding this right, because it's not very intuitive,
Speaker 1: right it's And the thing is, it's household. Peers are
Speaker 1: rather into it. It's like a hot water heater. It's
Speaker 1: rather simple. You know, you don't have to do much
Speaker 1: tinkering with it to understand it. I just explained to
Speaker 1: my son how one works that the day because I neglected,
Speaker 1: I think, to ever, like tell him where the hot
Speaker 1: water came from. So I was like, oh, let's talk
Speaker 1: about where all the hot water went. Just now. Likewise,
Speaker 1: you know, the furnace, I feels a lot more. It's
Speaker 1: a lot easier to understand Washington seeing a dry or
Speaker 1: an oven. But yeah, the air conditioning requires a few
Speaker 1: more steps of understanding and really grasp what it's doing well,
Speaker 1: I think, especially because it involves chemistry and phase changes
Speaker 1: having to do with like phase changes between liquid and
Speaker 1: gas and gas and liquid and compression and condensation and
Speaker 1: all that. So these things I think are less intuitive
Speaker 1: to us than just putting heat into something. But another
Speaker 1: way you can think about an air conditioner is that
Speaker 1: it's a heater for outside. An air conditioner is just
Speaker 1: a heater from outside, and the heat energy that it
Speaker 1: draws to heat the outside comes from the air in
Speaker 1: your house. And of course it accesses that heat energy
Speaker 1: very rapidly by by having this this low boiling point
Speaker 1: liquid and blowing air over it really fast. All right,
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about how we got to
Speaker 1: this modern technological marvel that is the air conditioning unit.
Speaker 1: But before we get there, I want to talk to
Speaker 1: us a little bit about but we want to basically
Speaker 1: drop in on a favorite invention and stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind historical figure, and that is, of course Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so he actually did some early air conditioning
Speaker 1: style experiments. Yes, Now to be clear, Ben Franklin did
Speaker 1: not invent air conditioning. And I it's interesting you see
Speaker 1: this tippit about Benjamin Franklin, either correctly attributed or sometimes
Speaker 1: incorrectly attributed, show up on a lot of different air
Speaker 1: conditioning company websites. I don't know if it's about just
Speaker 1: you know, adding engaging content on the website. So it's
Speaker 1: about you know, you know, ranking and search and so
Speaker 1: they just put some some some fun content on there,
Speaker 1: getting some of that founding father Mojoe. But if you've
Speaker 1: read anywhere that Ben Franklin invented air conditioning, uh, he
Speaker 1: did not, I want to be clear on that. But
Speaker 1: he did experiment with the refrigerating effects of various liquids
Speaker 1: and the role evaporation plays in the process. He experimented
Speaker 1: with Cambridge professor John Hadley using ether and a bellows
Speaker 1: to cool a mercury thermometer down to twenty five below freezing.
Speaker 1: And this makes sense because while this is not exactly
Speaker 1: an air conditioning unit, it is basically taking from the
Speaker 1: same principles that will be employed in the kind of
Speaker 1: air conditioning unit we just described, having something with a
Speaker 1: low boiling point, like while water boils at two hundred
Speaker 1: and twelve degrees fahrenheit or a hundred degrees celsius, the
Speaker 1: boiling point of ether, I think diethyl ether is around
Speaker 1: ninety four degrees fahrenhydro thirty five degrees celsius, so it
Speaker 1: boils much more easily. Blowing air rapidly over a massive
Speaker 1: ether is kind of like the blower in a modern
Speaker 1: AC unit blowing air over an evaporator coil full of refrigerant.
Speaker 1: It rapidly evaporates, and it steals energy from the surrounding air,
Speaker 1: thus cooling the air. So Franklin wrote about all this
Speaker 1: uh and about sort of the general knowledge of cooling
Speaker 1: technology to do is aware of in a seventeen fifty
Speaker 1: eight letter to John Lenning and UH. And this this
Speaker 1: letter is available online, and I want to read read
Speaker 1: a portion of it here, referring to the experiment that
Speaker 1: we just mentioned. Quote from this experiment, one may see
Speaker 1: the possibility of freezing a man to death on a
Speaker 1: warm summer's day if you were to stand in a
Speaker 1: passage through which the wind blew briskly, and to be
Speaker 1: wet frequently with ether, a spirit that is more inflammable
Speaker 1: than brandy or common spirits of wine. Okay, Franklin maybe
Speaker 1: knew something about brandy and wine. No, no, I don't
Speaker 1: mean to. I imagine he did. I believe he did.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so he's talking about the evaporation principle. Then again,
Speaker 1: especially if you have something with a very low boiling point,
Speaker 1: you like put alcohol or ether or something all over
Speaker 1: a person because it evaporates very readily, and then you
Speaker 1: blow a fan on them, it will chill them even
Speaker 1: more than blowing a fan on like a person wet
Speaker 1: with water. Right now, this first part of the letter
Speaker 1: about freezing a man to death on a warm summer's day,
Speaker 1: you see that thrown around a lot, and it does
Speaker 1: show up on a number of air conditioning websites out there.
Speaker 1: But the rest of the weather the letter is really
Speaker 1: cool too, So I want to read the next passage
Speaker 1: of it. It's a bit longer, where he just talks
Speaker 1: about refrigeration technology in general. Quote. It is but within
Speaker 1: these few years that the European philosophers seem to have
Speaker 1: known this power in nature of cooling bodies by evaporation.
Speaker 1: But in the Yeast they have long been acquainted with it.
Speaker 1: A friend tells me there is a passage in Bernis
Speaker 1: travels through Indostan, ridden near one hundred years ago, that
Speaker 1: mentions it as a practice, in traveling over dry deserts
Speaker 1: in that hot climate, to carry water in flasks wrapped
Speaker 1: in wet woolen cloths and hung on the shady side
Speaker 1: of the camel or carriage. But in the free air,
Speaker 1: whereby as the cloths gradually grow drier, the water contained
Speaker 1: in the flask is made cooler. They have likewise a
Speaker 1: kind of earthen pots, unglazed, which let the water gradually
Speaker 1: and slowly ooze through their pores, so as to keep
Speaker 1: the outside a little wet, notwithstanding the continual evaporation which
Speaker 1: gives great coldness to the vessel and the water contained
Speaker 1: in it. Even our common sailors seem to have had
Speaker 1: some notion of this property. For I remember that, being
Speaker 1: at sea when I was a youth, I observed one
Speaker 1: of the sailors during a calm in the night, often
Speaker 1: wetting his finger in his mouth and in holding it
Speaker 1: up in the air to discover, as he said, if
Speaker 1: the air had any motion, and from which side it came.
Speaker 1: And this he expected to do by finding one side
Speaker 1: of his finger grows suddenly cold, and from that side
Speaker 1: he should look for the next wind, which I then
Speaker 1: laughed at as a fancy what. Some people didn't like
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin at the time would not have accepted that
Speaker 1: the cold side of a wet finger is where the
Speaker 1: wind is coming from. His youth him. Yeah. So this
Speaker 1: letter and and various other documents can be found at
Speaker 1: founders dot archives dot gov. Um Uh, there's a number
Speaker 1: of writings from figures like Ben Franklin there. Ben Franklin's
Speaker 1: writings are are are typically worth checking out. A lot
Speaker 1: of his letters are just fantastic. There was one we
Speaker 1: quoted at length in a couple of stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind episodes we did about the early days of
Speaker 1: electricity experiments, where Benjamin Franklin describes his attempts to uh
Speaker 1: to kill and roast a turkey for a big party
Speaker 1: using laden jars. Yeah, Franklin is an interesting figure. It
Speaker 1: would be kind of potentially interesting to come back and
Speaker 1: look at him in greater detail in a future episode
Speaker 1: of one of these, uh these shows, because he did
Speaker 1: have his hand in a lot of science. You know,
Speaker 1: he's a true Enlightenment character. Um. You tend not to
Speaker 1: see individuals involved in American politics so involved in the
Speaker 1: sciences these days. Right now, before we get onto the
Speaker 1: more recent notable attempts to actually create some kind of
Speaker 1: air conditioner for rooms, I guess we could briefly mention
Speaker 1: one other important figure around the same time in early
Speaker 1: refrigeration and cooling research, and that would be the Scottish
Speaker 1: physician and inventor William Cullen who lived seventeen ten to
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety, who invented a process for evaporative cooling in
Speaker 1: the seventeen fifties, which he described in an essay from
Speaker 1: the mid seventeen hundreds with a hilariously bad title quote
Speaker 1: of the cold produced by evaporating fluids and of some
Speaker 1: other means of producing cold. Well, it's not that that.
Speaker 1: Basically he got ethyl ether to boil by creating a
Speaker 1: partial vacuum. So you put ethel ether, which has a
Speaker 1: low boiling point in a chamber, and then you you
Speaker 1: lower the pressure in the chamber, which causes the liquid
Speaker 1: to boil at an even lower temperature, and the evaporation
Speaker 1: that that causes, of course again sucks energy from the
Speaker 1: surroundings and has a rapid cooling effect on on whatever's
Speaker 1: around this chamber. But we're gonna find maybe our first
Speaker 1: real attempt at creating an air conditioner for a room,
Speaker 1: not in Scotland, not not in Ben Franklin's labs or
Speaker 1: in his experiments at Cambridge or wherever. We're gonna go
Speaker 1: somewhere else that's right, and you'll find out right after this.
Speaker 1: Great alright, we're back. So I'm not saying it doesn't
Speaker 1: get hot in Scotland, but I know a place where
Speaker 1: it definitely gets hot here in the United States, and
Speaker 1: that is, of course, the Panhandle of Florida. Did you
Speaker 1: ever live in Florida? No, but it's I've always, well
Speaker 1: not always, but I've much of my life has been
Speaker 1: lived in the American South, So Florida has always been
Speaker 1: a place to go for vacations and so so generally
Speaker 1: in summer months when it is it is sweltering. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're going to be turning to a figure a
Speaker 1: Florida man named John B. Gory. Yes, so, John B.
Speaker 1: Gory lived eighteen oh three through eighteen fifty five was
Speaker 1: an American physician. Born in the West Indies, raised in
Speaker 1: South Carolina, educated in New York, and then he moved
Speaker 1: to Appalachicola, Florida in eighteen thirty three. And Appalachicola is
Speaker 1: a small coastal town in the Panhandle of Florida. It's
Speaker 1: near St. George's Island. I think, which at some point
Speaker 1: in my life, I think I actually went on a
Speaker 1: vacation too. Yeah, I mean I've been to Appalachicola, and
Speaker 1: I did not realize it's significance in history. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously I didn't spend a lot of time or I
Speaker 1: might have seen a statue too of the man we're
Speaker 1: talking about now. But of course you might imagine Florida
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds, there's going to be a good
Speaker 1: amount of disease going around. This is going to be
Speaker 1: basically a tropical disease environment. Yeah. So while he was
Speaker 1: in Appletrico, he practiced medicine, but he also studied these
Speaker 1: tropical diseases, especially yellow fever and as miasma. Theory was
Speaker 1: still in fashion at the time. He considered bad air
Speaker 1: to be the key factor in these illnesses. Now, we've
Speaker 1: discussed miasma theory before. I know, we discussed it and
Speaker 1: stuff to build your mind. I can't remember if it
Speaker 1: came up on invention or not, I'm not sure, But basically,
Speaker 1: miasma theory was the idea that diseases it was. It
Speaker 1: was a pre germ theory hypothesis on the origins of
Speaker 1: disease that postulated that diseases were spread by bad air
Speaker 1: or bad vapors, often associated with bad smelling things like carrion,
Speaker 1: or like swamps or marshes. But then there were also
Speaker 1: more supernatural versions of it that believe that like bad
Speaker 1: vapors would come down off of the planets or something. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember the discussing those the planets, Uh, in the
Speaker 1: planets in graveyards, for instance, certainly, you know, not places
Speaker 1: you're gonna catch a supernatural illness like this. But of
Speaker 1: course you can see where the correlation comes in when
Speaker 1: you're dealing with unburied corpses or swamp lands that are
Speaker 1: loaded with say mosquitoes that are of course, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: carrying potential human diseases exactly right. Yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: swamp lands thing being a really important, uh point of comparison.
Speaker 1: There were these ideas of like night vapors coming off
Speaker 1: of the marsh or the swamp, where the real problem
Speaker 1: is that you've got a mosquito giving you malaria or
Speaker 1: giving you yellow fever. But I also want to say
Speaker 1: that I think it wasn't just a belief in miasma
Speaker 1: theory that led to a desire to cool the air
Speaker 1: and hospital rooms for patients suffering from diseases like yellow
Speaker 1: fever and malaria. I think part of it was also
Speaker 1: just the idea of the comfort of the patients. But
Speaker 1: something this did make me think about was that it's
Speaker 1: interesting that it seems like we have a I was
Speaker 1: gonna say natural association. I don't know if it's a
Speaker 1: natural instinctual association or if it's learned, but this association
Speaker 1: between cold fluids and cleanliness and warm fluids with uncleanliness, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's just me. I think that's a
Speaker 1: common cultural association, like cold air and cold water automatically
Speaker 1: feel clean, while stagnant warm air and tepid water feel dirty.
Speaker 1: And I don't. Do you think that's like something you
Speaker 1: know from deep in our brains and our primate ancestors,
Speaker 1: or is that just something we learn in life through culture.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. I've never really thought about
Speaker 1: it much. I mean, obviously, if you're in a hot room,
Speaker 1: you're likely to be sweaty. And if you're sweaty over time,
Speaker 1: that can produce a certain odor and you can feel,
Speaker 1: you know, dirtier because of it, I guess, and we
Speaker 1: and and certainly in the air conditioning age, you come
Speaker 1: to associate the outdoors is a place where you sweat,
Speaker 1: and sweat being the product of toiling. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: inside you're gonna have access to air conditioning. This is
Speaker 1: going to be a play. So you know, generally you
Speaker 1: know of of more relaxation uh and uh and maybe
Speaker 1: cleaner activities. You're not getting his dirty. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: Gory definitely was responding to the idea that a hospital
Speaker 1: should be cool in part because of the you know,
Speaker 1: the of the maasthma theory that you need some you
Speaker 1: need some good air in there, which means you need
Speaker 1: some cold air cool it down, especially for those feverish patients. Yes,
Speaker 1: uh and you know, there's still some truth to this today.
Speaker 1: I mean, you go into a hospital now, not because
Speaker 1: of miasthma theory, but hospitals now tend to be pretty
Speaker 1: chilly places. I would say, yeah, yeah, absolutely, of course
Speaker 1: that's really come to be the case of most like
Speaker 1: large you know, buildings of like schools, libraries like these
Speaker 1: are these are places that are refuges of of the
Speaker 1: cool in hot climates. Usually, So Gory wanted to cool
Speaker 1: down the hospital, and his first approach to this simply
Speaker 1: involved hanging tubs of ice from the ceiling, which is
Speaker 1: actually a pretty solid idea given that that that cool
Speaker 1: air is going to descend, right. But of course this
Speaker 1: brings us back to the historic Roman problem. Uh and
Speaker 1: uh and also I suppose the the Aztec problem as well,
Speaker 1: of of how to transport that ice. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're getting that ice from somewhere, uh, you've got to
Speaker 1: transport it all the way to your hospital and then
Speaker 1: hanging up in the ceiling. Yeah. And so at this
Speaker 1: time we talked in the last episode about, of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: this Roman problem, like bringing snow down from the mountaintops,
Speaker 1: snow or ice. In ancient Rome, there were people who
Speaker 1: sold it, but it seems like it was something of
Speaker 1: a luxury. Right. It's gonna take a lot of work
Speaker 1: to bring snow down, and someone's gonna melt on the way.
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, it's an expensive proposition. The large scale
Speaker 1: transport of ice had actually only recently become a big
Speaker 1: business in in Gorey's time here, so in the eighteen
Speaker 1: thirties or forties, due in large part to the efforts
Speaker 1: of a single ambitious business man from Boston named Frederick
Speaker 1: the Ice King Tutor. Like an Adventure Time, Yes, Oh wait,
Speaker 1: I didn't know, is there? Yeah, there's an ice king
Speaker 1: on Adventure Time. He's you know, he's a king, an
Speaker 1: evil king with with ice based powers, but he is
Speaker 1: the Ice King. Okay, well maybe you be. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen this, so you'll be the judge of how well
Speaker 1: this fits with Frederick the Ice King Tutor. So, Tutor's
Speaker 1: shipments of block ice traveled not only to customers in
Speaker 1: the American South, of course, they went to New Orleans
Speaker 1: and to Charleston and all over the place, but also
Speaker 1: all over the Caribbean, from Havana to Martinique. They even
Speaker 1: went around the world to Brazil, into Europe, into India
Speaker 1: and India. Apparently his ice was hugely popular, and the
Speaker 1: story of Frederick Tutor's ice business, I think is in
Speaker 1: itself pretty fascinating. Basically, Tutor developed a process for mass
Speaker 1: harvesting of ice from frozen lakes and ponds in and
Speaker 1: I think rivers too in the winter in New England,
Speaker 1: and then taking that ice harvested from these bodies of
Speaker 1: fresh water two warmer destinations down south, where the ice
Speaker 1: was sold for various refreshing purposes, often for cooling drinks,
Speaker 1: but at least occasionally for cooling rooms. Alla gory. And
Speaker 1: this would have been to most people a very new
Speaker 1: thing at the time. Like can you imagine how magical
Speaker 1: it must have seemed living your whole life in a
Speaker 1: tropical climate and then one day, for the first time ever,
Speaker 1: being served a cold drink with ice floating in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it must have been magical. You know this?
Speaker 1: This reminds me of the film The Mosquito Coast. Did
Speaker 1: you ever see this with the Harrison Ford? No, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it, but I know about it. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know the plot, The central plot involves this. This character
Speaker 1: played the Harrison Ford is like a brilliant inventor and
Speaker 1: kind of eccentric and very opinionated and strong willed individual. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he and they traveled to I can't remember if
Speaker 1: it's Belize or Costa Rica or it was filmed in
Speaker 1: one of the two, one of the two. It's a
Speaker 1: travels down there with the idea of constructing this ice
Speaker 1: generating machine, sheen and bringing bringing ice to the people.
Speaker 1: And so there's this wonderful scene where they've they've they've
Speaker 1: created the ice in the machine, and they've they've transported
Speaker 1: it wrapped in leaves to to preserve it, to show
Speaker 1: it to some native peoples. And by the time they
Speaker 1: get there, they're unwrapping the leaves trying to find this
Speaker 1: tiny bit of remaining ice and like that there's and
Speaker 1: it's just, you know, virtually all melted away at the core. Well,
Speaker 1: it also makes me think about the opening of the
Speaker 1: novel One Years of Solitude by Gabrielle Garcia Marquez, and
Speaker 1: in the first chapter of that there's this, you know,
Speaker 1: the mythical history of this family, and there's a story
Speaker 1: about the patriarch taking his children to see Uh. I
Speaker 1: think a traveler brings a chest that has ice in it.
Speaker 1: None of them have ever seen ice before? Oh well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it would have. It would have been a
Speaker 1: magical occurrence. Again. Uh, one of the marvelous privileges of
Speaker 1: the modern age that most of us take for granted.
Speaker 1: And how I mean, I don't want to like it
Speaker 1: seems absurd now that you would harvest ice from a
Speaker 1: cold climate, put it in a ship, and ship it
Speaker 1: to another part of the world. But this turned into
Speaker 1: a huge business. No. The Ice King, I should say,
Speaker 1: had a lot of early failures in like the first
Speaker 1: decade of the eighteen hundreds. For example, some of his
Speaker 1: early shipment's just melted at their port of arrival before
Speaker 1: they could be sold and used, because there were no
Speaker 1: ice houses to keep the ice insulated after it showed up.
Speaker 1: But over the years Tutor improved the feasibility and the
Speaker 1: efficiency of his business in quite a few different ways.
Speaker 1: A few interesting examples I was reading about. One was,
Speaker 1: of course, establishing ice houses right to store the ice
Speaker 1: when it arrived in the warmer climates. Another was this
Speaker 1: quest to find better insulating packing material to keep the
Speaker 1: ice cold while it was being shipped. Originally he used straw,
Speaker 1: but experimented with stuff like rice and even cold us,
Speaker 1: but later he found that pine sawdust worked best of
Speaker 1: all to keep the ice cold. And then later he
Speaker 1: partnered with an ventor named Nathaniel Jarvis Wyath, who yep
Speaker 1: related to the painter Andrew Wyath. Uh and nat Wyath
Speaker 1: came up with lots of improved methods and tools for
Speaker 1: tutors business, including designs for insulated, double walled above ground
Speaker 1: ice houses, and crucially for a horse drawn ice cutter
Speaker 1: that works kind of like a furrow plow. It would
Speaker 1: saw out ice blocks in a grid pattern as it
Speaker 1: was dragged behind the horse, and then these ice blocks
Speaker 1: that were sought out could be easily broken apart from
Speaker 1: one another and floated down to a retrieval site. And
Speaker 1: this apparently greatly streamlined the harvesting process and decrease the
Speaker 1: cost device. And I've got a picture here, Robert, you
Speaker 1: can see of what this horse drawn ice cutter looks like.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of it's surreal watching these people standing
Speaker 1: on the surface of a frozen lake that's just cut
Speaker 1: into a grid. It looks like graph paper. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they just ditting it up to ship it out. And
Speaker 1: in fact, I found this historical connection too good to miss.
Speaker 1: The American writer Henry David throw encountered commercial ice harvesters
Speaker 1: at work in Walden Pond, and he wrote about them
Speaker 1: in his book Walden. Do you mind if I read
Speaker 1: part of this quote here? Robert Okay, so a thorough rights. Thus,
Speaker 1: for sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred
Speaker 1: men at work, like busy husbandman, with teams and horses,
Speaker 1: and apparently all the implements of farming, such a picture
Speaker 1: as we see on the first page of the almanac.
Speaker 1: And as often as I looked out, I was reminded
Speaker 1: of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or
Speaker 1: the parable of the sower and the like. And now
Speaker 1: they're all gone. And in thirty days more probably I
Speaker 1: shall look from the same window on the pure sea
Speaker 1: green Walden water, there reflecting the clouds and the trees,
Speaker 1: and sending up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces
Speaker 1: will appear that a man has ever stood there. Perhaps
Speaker 1: I shall hear a solitary loon laugh as he dives
Speaker 1: and plumes himself, or she'll see a lonely fisher in
Speaker 1: his boat like a floating leaf, beholding his form reflected
Speaker 1: in the waves where lately a hundred men securely a bird.
Speaker 1: Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and
Speaker 1: New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta drink at
Speaker 1: my well. Oh and he he also goes on to
Speaker 1: to contemplate his his fascination with the philosophy of the
Speaker 1: Baga Bodhida uh and eventually concludes by saying that, uh,
Speaker 1: that the pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred
Speaker 1: water of the Ganji's And I guess in mind there
Speaker 1: he just has the fact that the ice from his
Speaker 1: pond is maybe going to end up in India in
Speaker 1: somebody's drink. Oh yeah, it's kind of the reverse of
Speaker 1: the the the argument ever before that all water has
Speaker 1: been dinosaur p You know, it's true, all water has
Speaker 1: been Henry David Throw's bathwater that like all every every
Speaker 1: chunk of ice in every drink you've ever had, Henry
Speaker 1: David Thorreau washed his butt with. It's probably true. It's
Speaker 1: statistically it's true. Yeah. Well, you know this this brings
Speaker 1: this boy the the whole question of water purification. The
Speaker 1: process of water purification is interesting because um, you know,
Speaker 1: we could easily do a whole well, we could easily
Speaker 1: do a whole episode on just technology involved in purifying water,
Speaker 1: but also the psychology of water purification, Like what how
Speaker 1: many steps need to be there, organic or industrial before
Speaker 1: we will accept that we are drinking something that was
Speaker 1: once potentially urine or bath water, that was essentially gray
Speaker 1: or or worse water at some point is now our
Speaker 1: drinking water. Um, it's it's it's quite fascinating we start
Speaker 1: breaking down the psychology. Yeah, well, I mean H two
Speaker 1: O molecules or H two O molecules. It's like, just
Speaker 1: because H two O was once part of poop, or
Speaker 1: was once part of blood, or was once you know,
Speaker 1: something else, now it's not anymore. Yeah, Like, why don't
Speaker 1: we That's that's gross. But we're okay with having been stardust,
Speaker 1: you know, that's right. I mean we kind of pick
Speaker 1: and choose, don't we. I Mean, it doesn't bring the
Speaker 1: poop with it unless it does. But we still want
Speaker 1: to think that, right, We still we still want to
Speaker 1: think that it is still in some way poop in
Speaker 1: the same way that we might we might listen to
Speaker 1: the song would Stock and think, yeah, there is a
Speaker 1: piece of a star inside me, and it's burning bright
Speaker 1: with the you know, with the power of of an
Speaker 1: entire solar system. That's a good connection, Robert. That's also
Speaker 1: it's a bit of that thorough energy. And I know
Speaker 1: some people actually did I think Thorow is kind of boring,
Speaker 1: but I found that passage rather beautiful. Uh So, Anyway,
Speaker 1: by the middle of the nineteenth century, shipped ice was
Speaker 1: this huge business, and as you might imagine, it could
Speaker 1: also be fickle, right, because it's ice, it's not the
Speaker 1: most stable of commodities. Like slight variations in the weather
Speaker 1: patterns elsewhere in the world could potentially mess with supply
Speaker 1: and demand for ice in a major way, leading to
Speaker 1: the dreaded ice shortage. So now you're living somewhere hot
Speaker 1: and you've got a taste for ice, but maybe sometimes
Speaker 1: the ice market could get mighty tight, right. And it's
Speaker 1: one thing if you're just you're looking for ways to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to to cool your drink down. But if
Speaker 1: you're looking at like Gory was, at a hospital, a
Speaker 1: situation where you believe that there is a there's a
Speaker 1: there's a strong advantage and having a cooled down hospital room, uh,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna want to have some way to produce
Speaker 1: ice uh locally. So he began became increasingly obsessed with
Speaker 1: the problem of artificial ice production, so much so that
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty five he gave up medicine to look
Speaker 1: into this full time. And UH he actually acquired patents
Speaker 1: and UH he had acquired patents in eighteen thirties and
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirties for an ice machine that employed cooling
Speaker 1: caused by rapid gas expansion. It used pumps to compress
Speaker 1: air by injecting uh it with water. Compressed air was
Speaker 1: then submerged in coils within a bath of cooling water.
Speaker 1: The interjected water condensed out in a holding tank. Then
Speaker 1: the compressed air was released into a tank of lower
Speaker 1: pressure brine, bringing the brine tank down to twenty six
Speaker 1: degrees or less. Metal containers of water were lowered in,
Speaker 1: becoming bricks of ice, which could than be withdrawn. So
Speaker 1: and then he could then he could have, you know,
Speaker 1: hang them or position them in the hospital rooms, or
Speaker 1: they could be used as such to then cool them down. Right,
Speaker 1: So he's using compression and expansion of these substances. The
Speaker 1: rapid expansion cools everything around it. He's using that to
Speaker 1: cool water and create ice. Now, one question is why
Speaker 1: is this often considered a predecessor, an early step in
Speaker 1: the creation of air conditioning when it is really refrigeration.
Speaker 1: It's a refrigeration process. I mean, air conditioning is a
Speaker 1: refrigeration process. But he was creating ice. I think it's
Speaker 1: probably because Gory planned to use the blocks of ice
Speaker 1: to cool hospital rooms. Right. Yeah, that was an initial
Speaker 1: um entry into the world of refrigeration. So today he's
Speaker 1: he's recognized a lot more, especially in Appalachicola. Uh. You
Speaker 1: can find a statue of him there. Uh. And thus,
Speaker 1: but at the at the time, he had problems with
Speaker 1: his invention, and Jacob Perkins beat him out for the
Speaker 1: tide of Father of the Refrigerator in eighteen thirty five.
Speaker 1: And Uh, Gory's continued efforts to get his own invention
Speaker 1: off the ground failed for a few different reasons, and
Speaker 1: he died without achieving his his goal of becoming the
Speaker 1: master refrigeration in eighteen fifty five. Yeah. For some reason,
Speaker 1: Gory faced a lot of harsh opposition and ridicule, especially
Speaker 1: in the press. I was reading a paper by the
Speaker 1: American historian Raymond Arsenal about the impact of air conditioning
Speaker 1: on the culture of the American South, and Arsenal just
Speaker 1: notes that most of Gory's contemporaries were dismissive of his achievements,
Speaker 1: and as an example, one journalist I think, writing for
Speaker 1: the New York Globe at some point described Gory by saying, quote,
Speaker 1: a crankdown in Florida thinks he can make ice as
Speaker 1: good as Almighty God. Well, you know it's it's that
Speaker 1: is ridiculous and and clearly, um, you know, shows some
Speaker 1: some anti Floridian bias. Uh. However, you know that that
Speaker 1: kind of headline wouldn't be completely out of out of
Speaker 1: line today. I mean you still see a lot of
Speaker 1: headlines about about Florida and kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: this stigmatization of of Florida. And so you can imagine
Speaker 1: stories today about a craze doctor who's quit his medical
Speaker 1: practice to try and make the perfect ice, to play
Speaker 1: God by creating ice, right, And you know, the same
Speaker 1: people might if the story we're taking place and say Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: it might be something different like, oh, this doctor he
Speaker 1: gave up his nine to five so he could pursue
Speaker 1: making the perfect cube of ice for your for you know,
Speaker 1: for your cocktails or your your scotch um. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I mean, it is always sad on this show when
Speaker 1: we have to look at an inventor and see that
Speaker 1: they you know, they if they died penniless, or they
Speaker 1: died without finding finding the recognition that they sought in life,
Speaker 1: only achieving it after death. I'm I'm always gonna end
Speaker 1: up um as much as possible, like siding with those individuals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean, well, so it's possibly because of
Speaker 1: this mercy merciless ridicule that Gorey failed to attain or
Speaker 1: retain investors for his invention. I think he had one
Speaker 1: major investor, but then that investor died, and then he
Speaker 1: had trouble getting other investors. Uh. And so what did
Speaker 1: Gory himself attribute the failure of his invention too? Well,
Speaker 1: to some extent, he blamed guess who the ice king? Well,
Speaker 1: he's up against big ice, right exactly? He blamed He
Speaker 1: suspected that Frederick the Ice King Tutor had arranged or
Speaker 1: financed a campaign of smears and disparagement against him in
Speaker 1: order to protect Tutor's own ice shipping business from competition. Now,
Speaker 1: was Gory correct in his suspicions. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: if so, it certainly wouldn't be the first or the
Speaker 1: only time that somebody used dirty tricks to protect an
Speaker 1: obsolete business model from legitimate competition. Oh. Absolutely, yeah. You
Speaker 1: don't have to put on a tinfoil hat to imagine
Speaker 1: a major industry of corporation doing this. They are still
Speaker 1: doing this sort of thing now. Towards the end of
Speaker 1: his life, Gory seemed to resign. Apparently he wrote that
Speaker 1: he thought America was simply not ready for refrigeration, but
Speaker 1: maybe maybe America was ready for refrigeration, because beginning around
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties, there did begin to be some commercial
Speaker 1: applications for refrigeration uh, developed by some other inventors and engineers,
Speaker 1: including in food and the food and beverage industries, particularly,
Speaker 1: I believe in meat packing and meat shipping. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: comes down to the necessity, right, Like, where are the
Speaker 1: areas where there is a definite uh necessity for refrigeration technology? Right?
Speaker 1: All right, on that note, we're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we will meet the father
Speaker 1: of air condition Alright, we're back. So here we come
Speaker 1: to a figure sometimes called the father of air conditioning.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that title is actually deserved, but it,
Speaker 1: you know, it's what a lot of people have said.
Speaker 1: So I don't think there's a way to argue that
Speaker 1: the guy were about to talk about was really the
Speaker 1: first person to create a cooling and humidity control system.
Speaker 1: But because of his important role in the history of
Speaker 1: this technology, credit for the invention of the first modern
Speaker 1: air conditioning system is often given to an American engineer
Speaker 1: named Willis Haviland Carrier, who designed an air conditioning system
Speaker 1: while working for a company called Buffalo Forge in nineteen
Speaker 1: o two. Now Willis Carrier was born on November eighteen,
Speaker 1: seventy six in Angola, New York, and he grew up
Speaker 1: on a farm. And one story that I found interesting
Speaker 1: was that apparently as a child, Carrier had difficulties with
Speaker 1: math in school, even though we would go on to
Speaker 1: become a successful engineer. And we we do have to
Speaker 1: consider the source here, but there was a biography of
Speaker 1: Willis Carrier written in the late nineteen forties by E.
Speaker 1: Cloud Wombler, who was the chairman of the Carrier Corporation.
Speaker 1: Wampler died in nineteen seventy three, but to the extent
Speaker 1: that we can believe this story. It is, as Wampler
Speaker 1: tells it, that when Carrier was nine years old, he
Speaker 1: had an experience that he believed to be the turning
Speaker 1: point in his life and in and it was that
Speaker 1: in school he was learning about fractions and he was
Speaker 1: just completely stumped, like, could not understand what was going
Speaker 1: on with fractions. How can you have part of a number?
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense. So his mother came up with
Speaker 1: a plan to help him. She sent him down into
Speaker 1: the seller to get some apples, and to quote from
Speaker 1: Wampler quote, then he was instructed to cut these into halves, quarters,
Speaker 1: and eights, and to add and subtract the portions. So
Speaker 1: fractions took on a meaning for him. In addition, he
Speaker 1: made a discovery that most problems which appear difficult can
Speaker 1: be worked down into something quite understandable. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: that's quite reasonable. You know that you see more and
Speaker 1: more of that I'm finding with mathematical education today. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, I went to some information sessions about how
Speaker 1: they're teaching mathematics at my son's school, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot more dependency on using uh you know, not apples,
Speaker 1: but like physical repert sentations of various values and creating
Speaker 1: this this physical idea of the numbers you're talking about,
Speaker 1: so that you have you have a grasp of what
Speaker 1: the numbers are and not just like a paper sense
Speaker 1: of the numbers. Yeah. So again, you know, we often
Speaker 1: on the show express skepticism about like foundational stories, about
Speaker 1: the people who created companies and stuff like that, because
Speaker 1: you always wonder like, is this really a true story
Speaker 1: or is this being told for marketing purposes? But you know,
Speaker 1: if we just accept Okay, well, let's let's say we
Speaker 1: think this is a true story, I can certainly see
Speaker 1: things like this. I don't know, I see stuff like
Speaker 1: this happening in real life. Like you're talking about that,
Speaker 1: like maybe math just doesn't make sense to a kid
Speaker 1: until they have a kind of like key visual metaphor moment.
Speaker 1: And there there are I do think these kinds of breakthroughs,
Speaker 1: and and it makes you wonder about, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: how how many kids are there out there who actually
Speaker 1: could have, you know, have the potential to have really
Speaker 1: great math based careers and a lot of success in mathematics,
Speaker 1: but they just never had the right teaching approach or
Speaker 1: never like had that moment where suddenly it all clicked. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So on the believability scale of corporate biographies, i'd give
Speaker 1: this one. This one was like an eight or not.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like he was visited by the
Speaker 1: Angel of refrigeration with a coiled halo or anything. We're
Speaker 1: also going to get a Eureka brain story that's coming
Speaker 1: in a second. So he studied engineering at Cornell University,
Speaker 1: graduating in nineteen o one. So here's the Eureka brain
Speaker 1: story as told by the Carrier Corporation. Uh, they say
Speaker 1: that genius can strike anywhere. For Willis Carrier, it was
Speaker 1: a foggy Pittsburgh train platform in nineteen o two. Carrier
Speaker 1: stared through the mist and realized that he could dry
Speaker 1: air by passing it through water to create fog. Doing
Speaker 1: so would make it possible to manufacture air with specific
Speaker 1: amounts of moisture in it. Within a year, he completed
Speaker 1: his invention to control humidity, the fundamental building block for
Speaker 1: modern air conditioning. Now, whether or not the Eureka brain
Speaker 1: scene actually happened, that he was actually standing at the
Speaker 1: train station when he had his breakthrough vision, it does
Speaker 1: point to the importance of humidity in the creation of
Speaker 1: Carriers first air conditioning system. Carriers air conditioner was not
Speaker 1: primarily for the purpose of lowering the temperature of a
Speaker 1: room for human comfort, but for the industrial purpose of
Speaker 1: removing excess humidity from the air which could prevent uh.
Speaker 1: In the idea was they wanted to prevent humidity from
Speaker 1: affecting the properties of ink and paper in a print
Speaker 1: shop environment. Yeah. Carrier was working at Sackett Wilhelms Lithographing
Speaker 1: and Publishing company in Brooklyn at the time. And UH,
Speaker 1: and you know this is this is certainly a reality
Speaker 1: that that that I can relate to, uh, the idea
Speaker 1: of like humidity destroying books and uh and uh and
Speaker 1: messing with your ink because there was it was like
Speaker 1: a not last summer and it was the summer before
Speaker 1: playing Dungeons and Dragons, uh on a back porch in
Speaker 1: like late summer, and it was you know, we're expecting
Speaker 1: things to cool down, but things had not really cooled down.
Speaker 1: It was hot, sweltering. It was so sweltering that we
Speaker 1: had a marker board to h like line out the
Speaker 1: dungeon and the the erasable markers that they ink from
Speaker 1: them was just like beating up and when was just
Speaker 1: turning into a wet mess. And the players handbook that
Speaker 1: I was using at the time, like it just completely
Speaker 1: fell apart, like the binding everything got he got moist
Speaker 1: from the humidity, and it just became just a stack
Speaker 1: of wet papers. That's horrible. I mean, it wasn't enough
Speaker 1: to drive us inside with the air conditioning. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's one thing I don't understand. I've got a really
Speaker 1: good friend who works in uh she works for the
Speaker 1: park service, and she works in the desert, you know,
Speaker 1: out in a big Bin National Park, and she came
Speaker 1: to stay at our house recently, and she was talking
Speaker 1: about how much she loved the humidity sitting in our backyard,
Speaker 1: and I just thought that was the most what George
Speaker 1: gen is like, I just love it when it's swampy
Speaker 1: out Like we travel out out west and we we
Speaker 1: admire the dry heat, right, Yeah, I kind of forget
Speaker 1: that one could potentially uh you know, pine after the moist, thick, humid,
Speaker 1: swimmable heat of the Georgian summer. And there's a reason
Speaker 1: related to the air conditioning technology that we've been talking about.
Speaker 1: There's a reason that so many people prefer the dry heat,
Speaker 1: which is that in the dry heat, the lower humidity
Speaker 1: content of the air aids and the evaporation of sweat
Speaker 1: from your skin. Right, the lower the moisture in the air,
Speaker 1: the faster your skin evaporates, which helps keep your body cool.
Speaker 1: That's why when the humidity is high, heat tends to
Speaker 1: feel worse. It's like you can't sweat to get the
Speaker 1: heat out of you, or you can sweat. I mean
Speaker 1: you will sweat, but the sweating is not as efficient
Speaker 1: in rising up as gas off of your skin. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so I guess we should briefly just mentioned how Carrier
Speaker 1: system worked. His method of air conditioning involved blowing air
Speaker 1: over what would what were riginally heating coils, which you know,
Speaker 1: steam would go through to help heat room. They were
Speaker 1: originally hollow heating coils, but instead they were filled with
Speaker 1: chilled water from a deep artisanal well instead of steam,
Speaker 1: and this cold water caused condensation of moisture from the
Speaker 1: surrounding air as that air was blown over the coils,
Speaker 1: removing the humidity and drying the air in the process,
Speaker 1: and the plane chilled water system was later upgraded I
Speaker 1: think the following year to include an ammonia compressor, which
Speaker 1: that's especially good because that will work during the summer
Speaker 1: because now you're taking advantage of the lower boiling point
Speaker 1: refrigerant which can be expanded and compressed. And while the
Speaker 1: original air conditioner was just for this industrial purpose of
Speaker 1: controlling humidity, Carrier did see the potential if it didn't
Speaker 1: just remove humidity but also cooled the indoor air. There
Speaker 1: could be major non industrial markets for this system adding
Speaker 1: comfort to human occupied buildings. Yes, absolutely, And so really,
Speaker 1: out of this the the age of refrigeration, the age
Speaker 1: of air conditioning is born, and it makes its way
Speaker 1: into industrial buildings, into hospitals first, but then it begins
Speaker 1: to find its way into other spaces and eventually homes
Speaker 1: as well. And this is the point where we would generally,
Speaker 1: you know, briefly discuss the legacy of a particular invention,
Speaker 1: but we are going to have to call it and
Speaker 1: come back and do an entire episode on the legacy
Speaker 1: of air conditioning because because I mean, there are some
Speaker 1: obvious areas where it's it's impactful, but it really changed
Speaker 1: the landscape of certainly American life, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in in ways that you might not even instantly think
Speaker 1: of and so, yeah, we're going to come back in
Speaker 1: a third air conditioning episode to just talk about how
Speaker 1: air conditioning change the world. Yeah, I'm really excited about
Speaker 1: that one. In the meantime, you can check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Invention and Invention bod dot com. Uh, you
Speaker 1: can check out our other show Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. You
Speaker 1: can find both podcasts wherever you get your podcasts these days,
Speaker 1: and if you do, wherever that happens to be. We
Speaker 1: would just ask that you subscribe to our shows that
Speaker 1: you rate and review us if you have the power
Speaker 1: to do so, leave a nice remark and recommend us
Speaker 1: to your friends. Share some of the wisdom that we
Speaker 1: have unearthed for you with the people that you know,
Speaker 1: and certainly if you have anything that you would like
Speaker 1: to add about air conditioning, the history of air conditioning,
Speaker 1: you're like, personal or family history with air conditioning, we
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. Huge thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producers Maya Cole and Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic, for the future, or just to say hello.
Speaker 1: You can email us at contact at invention pod dot com.
Speaker 1: Invention is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, because the iHeart Radio app app podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M