WEBVTT - Invention Playlist 3: Air Conditioning, Part 2 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:09.760 Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, 0:00:09.840 --> 0:00:12.480 welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.120 Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.560 exploration of the invention of air conditioning. Now, in the 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:21.840 last episode, we focused on a lot of ancient techniques 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:25.239 for versions of passive cooling, and some of these involved 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:29.760 like fans, circulation of air on the body, or designing 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:34.600 buildings to increase circulation of air. Some involved chilling air 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:38.520 by passing it through like underground channels of cold water 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:43.120 to particularly ingenious solution information persia. But today we're going 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:46.800 to be getting into the modern science and chemistry of 0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:50.000 air conditioning. Yeah, because, as we discussed in the last episode, 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:53.000 all these various techniques of the past, they were they 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:57.040 all ranged from like mild to moderate in their effects, 0:00:57.120 --> 0:01:00.360 and when used together, you know, they could imp prove 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:03.880 the quality of life for the individuals that we're living 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:08.560 with them. But modern air conditioning, as we'll explore, was 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:11.440 a huge game changer. Yeah. Now, this is going to 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:13.640 be one of those episodes where we can't name a 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:18.600 single person as the undisputed inventor of modern air conditioning. Instead, 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:20.200 I think what we see is a lot of different 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:23.600 engineers and inventors at different times coming up with new 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:27.880 versions and variations of cooling and refrigeration technology. So it's 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:29.440 going to be inevitable that we're not going to be 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:32.320 able to talk about all of the people who contributed 0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:35.800 some important early experiment or design that led to modern 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:38.679 refrigeration and air conditioning. Instead, we're going to be focusing 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:42.000 on a few highlights we found interesting, and likewise, we 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:44.480 tend we're going to discuss some things that are more 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:49.720 refrigeration based in the technology, but where we're focusing mostly 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:53.600 on air conditioning. And yet at the same time, the 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:56.840 history of these technologies is kind of in they're kind 0:01:56.840 --> 0:02:00.560 of interwoven with one another because they're they're both attempting 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:02.280 to do a very similar thing, and that is to 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:06.960 take a warm substance, be it uh, some water or 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:10.400 a certain body of air and making them cooler or 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:14.160 making them absolutely cold. And in many cases, modern air 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:17.360 conditioners and modern refrigerators work on the same principles. Not 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:20.040 in every case, but in a lot of cases they do. Uh. 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:21.800 And so the more I thought about this, the more 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:24.760 I thought it would make sense to start with a brief, 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:29.000 simplified explanation of how modern air conditioning generally works, and 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:31.120 then we can after that go back in time and 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:32.560 work our way up to it with some of these 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:36.040 interesting stories about early stabs at it. So, as we 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:38.600 mentioned in the last episode, there are multiple ways to 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:40.640 cool the air in a room or cool the people 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:44.360 in a room, but the most common method today uses 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:48.799 a system of hollow coils filled with a fluid called 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:52.200 a refrigerant, which is usually something chosen because as a 0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:55.200 low boiling point, meaning it changes from a liquid to 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:58.720 a gas at a low temperature, and the fluid in 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:02.919 this coil system flows constantly in a circuit that takes 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:06.160 it back and forth between the inside and the outside 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:08.720 of your house or whatever building or space you're trying 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.280 to cool, converting back and forth between a liquid and 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.519 a gas and carrying heat with it one way as 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:19.160 it goes. So so the whole way and air conditioner works. 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:22.720 The simple version is is just using this refrigerant to 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:25.520 absorb heat from the air in your house and then 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:28.119 dump it outside. And I'm not going to get into 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:31.720 super technical chemistry or anything like that. We're just giving 0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:34.320 you the cliffs notes version here, so the cliffs notes 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:37.119 version is when when you got this fluid the refrigerant, 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:40.640 it's in a cold liquid form. It flows through this 0:03:40.760 --> 0:03:42.880 coil on the inside of your house known as the 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:46.440 evaporator coil, and these coils get they get that there's 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:49.600 a blower motor that blows the air over them really fast, 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:53.520 and this causes these cold coils to absorb heat from 0:03:53.520 --> 0:03:56.400 the warm air inside your house and cool that air off. 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:58.360 In the process, the heat from the air is going 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.320 into the coils and then the nice cold air of 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:03.839 course that the results from this blows out your ace 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:06.440 events and it's just it's just now the indoor air 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:09.040 that has been nice and dehumidified and cooled off by 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:11.920 passing over these coils. The heat from the warm air 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:14.680 inside your house heats up this fluid inside the coils 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:17.640 and converts it from a liquid into a gas. And 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:19.360 the air in your house can do this because of 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:21.880 the refrigerant. Again, it's got a really low boiling point, 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:24.919 so it's very easy to convert this liquid into a gas. 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:28.800 This is something we see commonly in many early experiments 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:32.320 with with refrigeration and with air conditioning is they find 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:35.880 some kind of chemical like ether like alcohol that has 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:39.560 a low boiling point, so it's easy to cause this evaporation. 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:43.320 As we know from the last episode, evaporation sucks energy 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:46.640 out of the surroundings. It's an energy hungry process and 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:49.520 so it cools off everything around it. But now you've 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:52.279 had these coils full of refrigerants that have absorbed the 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:54.160 heat energy from the air in your house, and that 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:57.120 heat energy has to go somewhere, right, It can't just disappear. 0:04:57.160 --> 0:05:00.320 It's got to be dumped. So the fluid then blows 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:03.360 outside and somewhere along the way here. Often, if you've 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:06.479 got like a you know, an outdoor unit, uh, it 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:09.000 will go through a compressor, and that compressor will be 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:11.680 in the outdoor unit, and the compressor is powered by 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:15.880 a mechanical device that forcibly smashes that vapor and increases 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:19.800 its pressure by using electrically powered components to reduce the volume, 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:24.000 smashes it down, and then this pressurized refrigerant flows through 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:27.559 condenser coils. These are in the unit outside the house 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:30.080 or in the part of the air conditioner that's sticking outside, 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.599 which are another set of coils exposed to the outside air. 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:36.520 And this of course, it has another fan that rapidly 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:40.200 blows the outside air over these coils, so the outside 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:44.760 air rapidly absorbs the heat from the hot compressed refrigerant 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:47.560 inside the coils. The heat gets just dumped out into 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:50.719 the air outside, and this allows the refrigerant to cool 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:53.720 off and condense back down into a liquid. And then finally, 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:57.360 before the refrigerant can go through the evaporator coils inside again, 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:00.520 it passes through a device called an expansion valve, which 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:03.880 lowers the pressure that the compressor forced into it. So 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:06.159 now you're back to what you started with. You've got 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:09.360 this low boiling point liquid that can again be exposed 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:11.599 to the air inside your house. Blowing that air over 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:14.159 it really fast with a fan and it cools the 0:06:14.160 --> 0:06:17.400 air down and removes humidity from it in the process. Yeah, 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:19.039 when you lay it all out, it it's a it's 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:22.200 the celaborate process. I mean, we see again it's easy 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.880 to take air conditioning for granted when it is working. Um, 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:27.839 but it does remind me how when when I was 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:30.919 a kid, we would go to my my grandfather's house 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:35.400 and he he had window units in you know, the 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:38.840 major rooms of the of the house. And when one 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:43.320 was not was was not functioning. He was a superhanded guy, 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:45.279 so he would take it out of the window and 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:48.000 he would take it apart and repair it and tinker 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:50.760 with it. And I remember at the time just marveling 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:52.920 at all the things that seemed to be going on 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:56.200 inside of that air conditioning um and he was able 0:06:56.240 --> 0:06:58.240 to patch it up and get it back on the 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.640 window and functioning again. Yeah, it is weird. I tried, 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:04.800 Like it's hard. I remember when I was younger not 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:08.520 understanding how air conditioning worked and being kind of amazed 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:11.560 by it, and and I even remember having it explained 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:13.720 to me and like just in not clicking. And I 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:16.520 gotta admit, when we were preparing for this episode, I 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:19.200 spent a long time like looking at the diagrams and 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:21.400 trying to hack at it and make sure, like, okay, am, 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:24.960 I sure I'm understanding this right, because it's not very intuitive, 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:28.160 right it's And the thing is, it's household. Peers are 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:30.480 rather into it. It's like a hot water heater. It's 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:32.480 rather simple. You know, you don't have to do much 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.040 tinkering with it to understand it. I just explained to 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:38.080 my son how one works that the day because I neglected, 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:39.760 I think, to ever, like tell him where the hot 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:41.880 water came from. So I was like, oh, let's talk 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:45.760 about where all the hot water went. Just now. Likewise, 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:49.480 you know, the furnace, I feels a lot more. It's 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:52.080 a lot easier to understand Washington seeing a dry or 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:55.560 an oven. But yeah, the air conditioning requires a few 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:58.120 more steps of understanding and really grasp what it's doing well, 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:01.600 I think, especially because it involves chemistry and phase changes 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:04.600 having to do with like phase changes between liquid and 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:08.520 gas and gas and liquid and compression and condensation and 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:10.880 all that. So these things I think are less intuitive 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:13.800 to us than just putting heat into something. But another 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:16.440 way you can think about an air conditioner is that 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.960 it's a heater for outside. An air conditioner is just 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:24.080 a heater from outside, and the heat energy that it 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:26.840 draws to heat the outside comes from the air in 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:30.640 your house. And of course it accesses that heat energy 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:34.760 very rapidly by by having this this low boiling point 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:37.959 liquid and blowing air over it really fast. All right, 0:08:38.000 --> 0:08:41.000 So we're going to talk about how we got to 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.280 this modern technological marvel that is the air conditioning unit. 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:46.920 But before we get there, I want to talk to 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:49.760 us a little bit about but we want to basically 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:52.320 drop in on a favorite invention and stuff to blow 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:56.000 your mind historical figure, and that is, of course Benjamin Franklin. 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:59.040 Oh yeah, so he actually did some early air conditioning 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:02.560 style experiments. Yes, Now to be clear, Ben Franklin did 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:07.120 not invent air conditioning. And I it's interesting you see 0:09:07.120 --> 0:09:11.000 this tippit about Benjamin Franklin, either correctly attributed or sometimes 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:13.640 incorrectly attributed, show up on a lot of different air 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:16.560 conditioning company websites. I don't know if it's about just 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:19.679 you know, adding engaging content on the website. So it's 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:21.679 about you know, you know, ranking and search and so 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:24.559 they just put some some some fun content on there, 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:29.040 getting some of that founding father Mojoe. But if you've 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:32.520 read anywhere that Ben Franklin invented air conditioning, uh, he 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:35.080 did not, I want to be clear on that. But 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:38.960 he did experiment with the refrigerating effects of various liquids 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:42.920 and the role evaporation plays in the process. He experimented 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:46.959 with Cambridge professor John Hadley using ether and a bellows 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:49.960 to cool a mercury thermometer down to twenty five below freezing. 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:52.720 And this makes sense because while this is not exactly 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:55.480 an air conditioning unit, it is basically taking from the 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:57.480 same principles that will be employed in the kind of 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:00.720 air conditioning unit we just described, having something with a 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:03.920 low boiling point, like while water boils at two hundred 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:06.560 and twelve degrees fahrenheit or a hundred degrees celsius, the 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:09.360 boiling point of ether, I think diethyl ether is around 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:12.560 ninety four degrees fahrenhydro thirty five degrees celsius, so it 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:16.439 boils much more easily. Blowing air rapidly over a massive 0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:19.240 ether is kind of like the blower in a modern 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:23.040 AC unit blowing air over an evaporator coil full of refrigerant. 0:10:23.280 --> 0:10:27.080 It rapidly evaporates, and it steals energy from the surrounding air, 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:30.920 thus cooling the air. So Franklin wrote about all this 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:33.840 uh and about sort of the general knowledge of cooling 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:36.640 technology to do is aware of in a seventeen fifty 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:40.000 eight letter to John Lenning and UH. And this this 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:43.480 letter is available online, and I want to read read 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:46.840 a portion of it here, referring to the experiment that 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:50.080 we just mentioned. Quote from this experiment, one may see 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:52.720 the possibility of freezing a man to death on a 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.400 warm summer's day if you were to stand in a 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:58.840 passage through which the wind blew briskly, and to be 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:03.040 wet frequently with ether, a spirit that is more inflammable 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:08.360 than brandy or common spirits of wine. Okay, Franklin maybe 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:11.400 knew something about brandy and wine. No, no, I don't 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:14.360 mean to. I imagine he did. I believe he did. 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:17.960 But yeah, so he's talking about the evaporation principle. Then again, 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:20.520 especially if you have something with a very low boiling point, 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:23.200 you like put alcohol or ether or something all over 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:26.160 a person because it evaporates very readily, and then you 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:28.880 blow a fan on them, it will chill them even 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:31.120 more than blowing a fan on like a person wet 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:33.760 with water. Right now, this first part of the letter 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:36.800 about freezing a man to death on a warm summer's day, 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:39.520 you see that thrown around a lot, and it does 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:42.240 show up on a number of air conditioning websites out there. 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:44.800 But the rest of the weather the letter is really 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:46.640 cool too, So I want to read the next passage 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:48.560 of it. It's a bit longer, where he just talks 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:53.080 about refrigeration technology in general. Quote. It is but within 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:56.240 these few years that the European philosophers seem to have 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:59.800 known this power in nature of cooling bodies by evaporation. 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:02.679 But in the Yeast they have long been acquainted with it. 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:05.319 A friend tells me there is a passage in Bernis 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:09.520 travels through Indostan, ridden near one hundred years ago, that 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:13.040 mentions it as a practice, in traveling over dry deserts 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:16.520 in that hot climate, to carry water in flasks wrapped 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:20.120 in wet woolen cloths and hung on the shady side 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:22.800 of the camel or carriage. But in the free air, 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:27.280 whereby as the cloths gradually grow drier, the water contained 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:30.520 in the flask is made cooler. They have likewise a 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:34.640 kind of earthen pots, unglazed, which let the water gradually 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:37.480 and slowly ooze through their pores, so as to keep 0:12:37.520 --> 0:12:42.760 the outside a little wet, notwithstanding the continual evaporation which 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:46.200 gives great coldness to the vessel and the water contained 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.280 in it. Even our common sailors seem to have had 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:52.240 some notion of this property. For I remember that, being 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:54.679 at sea when I was a youth, I observed one 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:57.400 of the sailors during a calm in the night, often 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:00.160 wetting his finger in his mouth and in holding it 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:02.960 up in the air to discover, as he said, if 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:06.120 the air had any motion, and from which side it came. 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.240 And this he expected to do by finding one side 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:12.480 of his finger grows suddenly cold, and from that side 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:15.000 he should look for the next wind, which I then 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:19.839 laughed at as a fancy what. Some people didn't like 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:23.120 Ben Franklin at the time would not have accepted that 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:25.480 the cold side of a wet finger is where the 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:30.439 wind is coming from. His youth him. Yeah. So this 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:32.840 letter and and various other documents can be found at 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:37.760 founders dot archives dot gov. Um Uh, there's a number 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:41.480 of writings from figures like Ben Franklin there. Ben Franklin's 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:44.240 writings are are are typically worth checking out. A lot 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:46.480 of his letters are just fantastic. There was one we 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:48.719 quoted at length in a couple of stuff to Blow 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:50.840 your Mind episodes we did about the early days of 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:55.880 electricity experiments, where Benjamin Franklin describes his attempts to uh 0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:58.760 to kill and roast a turkey for a big party 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:03.680 using laden jars. Yeah, Franklin is an interesting figure. It 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:05.800 would be kind of potentially interesting to come back and 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:08.679 look at him in greater detail in a future episode 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:11.120 of one of these, uh these shows, because he did 0:14:11.120 --> 0:14:13.040 have his hand in a lot of science. You know, 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:17.720 he's a true Enlightenment character. Um. You tend not to 0:14:17.760 --> 0:14:22.640 see individuals involved in American politics so involved in the 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:26.960 sciences these days. Right now, before we get onto the 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:31.240 more recent notable attempts to actually create some kind of 0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:34.240 air conditioner for rooms, I guess we could briefly mention 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.000 one other important figure around the same time in early 0:14:37.160 --> 0:14:40.440 refrigeration and cooling research, and that would be the Scottish 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:44.200 physician and inventor William Cullen who lived seventeen ten to 0:14:44.240 --> 0:14:48.400 seventeen ninety, who invented a process for evaporative cooling in 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:51.320 the seventeen fifties, which he described in an essay from 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:55.240 the mid seventeen hundreds with a hilariously bad title quote 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:59.320 of the cold produced by evaporating fluids and of some 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:02.880 other means of producing cold. Well, it's not that that. 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:08.200 Basically he got ethyl ether to boil by creating a 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:11.000 partial vacuum. So you put ethel ether, which has a 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:14.520 low boiling point in a chamber, and then you you 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:17.600 lower the pressure in the chamber, which causes the liquid 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:21.080 to boil at an even lower temperature, and the evaporation 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:24.120 that that causes, of course again sucks energy from the 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:27.480 surroundings and has a rapid cooling effect on on whatever's 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:30.880 around this chamber. But we're gonna find maybe our first 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:35.160 real attempt at creating an air conditioner for a room, 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:39.360 not in Scotland, not not in Ben Franklin's labs or 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:42.440 in his experiments at Cambridge or wherever. We're gonna go 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:46.000 somewhere else that's right, and you'll find out right after this. 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:54.120 Great alright, we're back. So I'm not saying it doesn't 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:57.720 get hot in Scotland, but I know a place where 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:01.240 it definitely gets hot here in the United States, and 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:04.320 that is, of course, the Panhandle of Florida. Did you 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:07.360 ever live in Florida? No, but it's I've always, well 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:10.000 not always, but I've much of my life has been 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:12.280 lived in the American South, So Florida has always been 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:16.640 a place to go for vacations and so so generally 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:19.760 in summer months when it is it is sweltering. Right, 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:22.520 So we're going to be turning to a figure a 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:28.280 Florida man named John B. Gory. Yes, so, John B. 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:31.680 Gory lived eighteen oh three through eighteen fifty five was 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:34.800 an American physician. Born in the West Indies, raised in 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:37.760 South Carolina, educated in New York, and then he moved 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:42.360 to Appalachicola, Florida in eighteen thirty three. And Appalachicola is 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:46.200 a small coastal town in the Panhandle of Florida. It's 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:49.720 near St. George's Island. I think, which at some point 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:51.040 in my life, I think I actually went on a 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:54.120 vacation too. Yeah, I mean I've been to Appalachicola, and 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:57.200 I did not realize it's significance in history. I mean, 0:16:57.680 --> 0:16:59.160 obviously I didn't spend a lot of time or I 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:00.680 might have seen a statue too of the man we're 0:17:00.720 --> 0:17:04.080 talking about now. But of course you might imagine Florida 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:06.040 in the eighteen hundreds, there's going to be a good 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:08.320 amount of disease going around. This is going to be 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:11.800 basically a tropical disease environment. Yeah. So while he was 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:15.080 in Appletrico, he practiced medicine, but he also studied these 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:19.960 tropical diseases, especially yellow fever and as miasma. Theory was 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:23.120 still in fashion at the time. He considered bad air 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:26.320 to be the key factor in these illnesses. Now, we've 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:29.159 discussed miasma theory before. I know, we discussed it and 0:17:29.160 --> 0:17:30.720 stuff to build your mind. I can't remember if it 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:33.480 came up on invention or not, I'm not sure, But basically, 0:17:33.520 --> 0:17:37.240 miasma theory was the idea that diseases it was. It 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:40.639 was a pre germ theory hypothesis on the origins of 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:45.160 disease that postulated that diseases were spread by bad air 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:50.200 or bad vapors, often associated with bad smelling things like carrion, 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:53.760 or like swamps or marshes. But then there were also 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:56.520 more supernatural versions of it that believe that like bad 0:17:56.600 --> 0:18:00.280 vapors would come down off of the planets or something. Yeah, yeah, 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:04.520 I remember the discussing those the planets, Uh, in the 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:09.520 planets in graveyards, for instance, certainly, you know, not places 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:12.159 you're gonna catch a supernatural illness like this. But of 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:14.640 course you can see where the correlation comes in when 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:18.960 you're dealing with unburied corpses or swamp lands that are 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:22.600 loaded with say mosquitoes that are of course, uh, you know, 0:18:22.920 --> 0:18:25.840 carrying potential human diseases exactly right. Yeah, I think the 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:29.639 swamp lands thing being a really important, uh point of comparison. 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:32.240 There were these ideas of like night vapors coming off 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:34.600 of the marsh or the swamp, where the real problem 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:37.080 is that you've got a mosquito giving you malaria or 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:39.640 giving you yellow fever. But I also want to say 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:42.280 that I think it wasn't just a belief in miasma 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:44.240 theory that led to a desire to cool the air 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:48.160 and hospital rooms for patients suffering from diseases like yellow 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:50.400 fever and malaria. I think part of it was also 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:53.240 just the idea of the comfort of the patients. But 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:55.680 something this did make me think about was that it's 0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:58.520 interesting that it seems like we have a I was 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:00.680 gonna say natural association. I don't know if it's a 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:04.800 natural instinctual association or if it's learned, but this association 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:10.879 between cold fluids and cleanliness and warm fluids with uncleanliness, Like, 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:12.439 I don't think that's just me. I think that's a 0:19:12.480 --> 0:19:16.960 common cultural association, like cold air and cold water automatically 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:21.760 feel clean, while stagnant warm air and tepid water feel dirty. 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:24.600 And I don't. Do you think that's like something you 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.440 know from deep in our brains and our primate ancestors, 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:30.000 or is that just something we learn in life through culture. 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:33.200 I mean, I don't know. I've never really thought about 0:19:33.240 --> 0:19:35.080 it much. I mean, obviously, if you're in a hot room, 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:39.280 you're likely to be sweaty. And if you're sweaty over time, 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:42.119 that can produce a certain odor and you can feel, 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:45.800 you know, dirtier because of it, I guess, and we 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:48.800 and and certainly in the air conditioning age, you come 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:52.199 to associate the outdoors is a place where you sweat, 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:56.720 and sweat being the product of toiling. Uh. And then 0:19:56.760 --> 0:19:59.399 inside you're gonna have access to air conditioning. This is 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:01.800 going to be a play. So you know, generally you 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:05.800 know of of more relaxation uh and uh and maybe 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:10.240 cleaner activities. You're not getting his dirty. But at any rate, 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:15.359 Gory definitely was responding to the idea that a hospital 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.800 should be cool in part because of the you know, 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:21.560 the of the maasthma theory that you need some you 0:20:21.600 --> 0:20:23.399 need some good air in there, which means you need 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:27.960 some cold air cool it down, especially for those feverish patients. Yes, 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:31.440 uh and you know, there's still some truth to this today. 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:33.399 I mean, you go into a hospital now, not because 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:36.320 of miasthma theory, but hospitals now tend to be pretty 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:40.000 chilly places. I would say, yeah, yeah, absolutely, of course 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:42.240 that's really come to be the case of most like 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:47.000 large you know, buildings of like schools, libraries like these 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:49.639 are these are places that are refuges of of the 0:20:49.720 --> 0:20:53.680 cool in hot climates. Usually, So Gory wanted to cool 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:57.520 down the hospital, and his first approach to this simply 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:01.000 involved hanging tubs of ice from the ceiling, which is 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:05.240 actually a pretty solid idea given that that that cool 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:09.159 air is going to descend, right. But of course this 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:12.520 brings us back to the historic Roman problem. Uh and 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:16.080 uh and also I suppose the the Aztec problem as well, 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:19.080 of of how to transport that ice. You know, if 0:21:19.080 --> 0:21:22.159 you're getting that ice from somewhere, uh, you've got to 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:24.040 transport it all the way to your hospital and then 0:21:24.119 --> 0:21:26.479 hanging up in the ceiling. Yeah. And so at this 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:29.200 time we talked in the last episode about, of course, yeah, 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:32.400 this Roman problem, like bringing snow down from the mountaintops, 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:35.800 snow or ice. In ancient Rome, there were people who 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:37.520 sold it, but it seems like it was something of 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:39.800