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This week—August 15, to be exact—celebrates the climax of Air Conditioning Appreciation Days, a month-long tribute to the wonderful technology that has made summer heat a little more bearable for millions of people. Census figures tell us that nine out of ten Americans have central air conditioning, or a window unit, or more than one, in our homes; in our cars, it’s nearly universal. Go to any hardware or home goods store and you’ll see a pile of boxes containing no-fuss machines in a whole range of sizes, amazingly affordable, plop-’em-in-the-window-and-plug-’em-in-and-you’re-done. Not only do we appreciate the air conditioner, but we appreciate how easy it is to become air conditioned.
When it comes to cool, we’ve come a long way. But in earlier times, it was nowhere near as simple for ordinary citizens to get summertime comfort.
One of the first cooling contraptions offered to the public showed up around 1865, the brainchild of inventor Azel S. Lyman: Lyman’s Air Purifier. This consisted of a tall, bulky cabinet that formed the headboard of a bed, divided into various levels that held ice to cool the air, unslaked lime to absorb humidity, and charcoal to absorb “minute particles of decomposing animal and vegetable matter” as well as “disgusting gases.” Relying on the principle that hot air rises and cool air sinks, air would (theoretically) enter the cabinet under its own power, rise to encounter the ice, be dried by the lime, purified by the charcoal, and finally ejected—directly onto the pillow of the sleeper—“as pure and exhilarating as was ever breathed upon the heights of Oregon.” Lyman announced this marvel in Scientific American, and in the same issue ran an advertisement looking for salesmen. Somehow the Air Purifier didn’t take off.
More interesting to homeowners was the device that showed up in 1882, the electric fan. Until then, fans were powered by water or steam, usually intended for public buildings rather than homes, and most of them tended to circulate air lazily. But the electric model was quite different, with blades that revolved at 2,000 rpm—“as rapidly as a buzz saw,” observed one wag, and for years they were nicknamed “buzz” fans. They were some of the very first electrically powered appliances available for sale. They were also exorbitant, costing $20 (in modern terms, about $475). But that didn’t stop the era’s big spenders from seizing upon them eagerly. Delighted reviewers of the electric fan claimed that it was “warranted to lower the temperature of a room from ninety-five to sixty degrees in a few minutes” and that its effect was “like going into a cool grove.”
The fan combined with ice around the turn of the century, producing an eight-foot-tall metal object that its inventor called “The NEVO, or Cold Air Stove.” The principle was simple: air entered through a small pipe at the top, was pulled by a fan through the NEVO’s body—which had to be stuffed daily with 250 pounds of ice and salt to provide the cooling—and would then be discharged out an opening at the bottom. “It dries, washes, and purifies the air.” As the NEVO had more in common with a gigantic ice cream freezer than with actual temperature control, and the smallest NEVO cost $80 (nowadays, $1,700) and cost $100 per season (over $2,000) to operate, it didn’t get far.
By 100th Anniversary Press Kit – Carrier Corp (Carrier Corporation) Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By this time, a young engineer named Willis Carrier had developed a mechanical system that could actually cool the air and dry it, the Apparatus for Treating Air. But this was machinery of the Giant Economy Size, and used only in factories. In 1914, one wealthy gent asked Carrier to install a system in his new forty-bedroom Minneapolis home, and indeed the system was the same type that “a small factory” would use. Unfortunately, this proud homeowner died before the house was completed, and historians speculate that the machinery was never even turned on.
It wasn’t until 1929 that Frigidaire announced the first home air conditioner, the Frigidaire Room Cooler. This wasn’t in any way a lightweight portable. The Room Cooler consisted of a four-foot-tall metal cabinet, weighing 200 pounds, that had to be connected by pipes to a separate 400-pound compressor (“may be located in the basement, or any convenient location”). And it cost $800, in those days the same as a Pontiac roadster. While newspaper and magazine articles regarded the Room Cooler as a hot-weather miracle, the price (along with the setup requirements) meant that its customers came almost solely from the ranks of the rich, or businesses with cash to burn. Then fate intervened only months after the Room Cooler’s introduction when the stock market crashed, leaving very little cash for anyone to burn. Home air conditioning would have to wait until the country climbed back from the Depression.
Actually, it waited until the end of World War II, when the postwar housing boom prompted brand-new homeowners to fill their houses with the latest comforts. Along with television, air conditioning was at the top of the wish list. And at last, the timing was right; manufacturers were able to offer central cooling, as well as window units, at affordable prices. The compressor in the backyard, or the metal posterior droning out the window, became bona fide status symbols. By 1953, sales topped a million units—and the country never looked back.
Those who love celebrations, take note — July 17 marks the birthday of air conditioning. To recap the story, it was 112 years ago today that young engineer Willis Carrier unveiled the plans for his “Apparatus for Treating Air,” a contraption that was designed to lower the humidity in a Brooklyn printing plant. There was a bonus; it could cool the air, too. So thank you, Mr. Carrier. Once again, with the thermometer climbing into the Yow! zone, it’s time to celebrate your invention.
In the 1830s, Virginia inventor (and US Naval Commodore) James Barron patented his mechanically powered punkah as a ‘‘machine for fanning bed chambers, dining rooms, halls, &c.’’ Public Domain via National Archives.
And to hear from everyone who wants it to vanish.
This is nothing new. There have always been people who found air conditioning controversial. In its earliest years they considered it mystifying, possibly evil, because summer heat was something sent from Heaven and the mere idea of a machine that could cool the air was “going against the will of nature.” In later decades, it was seen as a symbol of fat-cat indulgence; then it morphed into a symbol of the soulless, sterile big city. Now, more than a century after its invention, air conditioning has been recast once again — as an out-of-control monstrosity, seducing third-world countries with the sleazy lure of hot-weather comfort while draining the planet of energy resources, and destroying the atmosphere as well.
In response, a whole confederation has grown up around the idea that we should — either gradually, or instantly, depending on who’s talking — give it up. British economist Gwyn Prins scolded that “physical addiction to air-conditioned air is the most pervasive and least noticed epidemic in modern America.” And Stan Cox, author of the book Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About our Air-Conditioned World, went further with a Washington Post article in which he envisioned/recommended a future Washington, DC completely devoid of mechanical cooling. “In a world without air conditioning, a warmer, more flexible, more relaxed workplace helps make summer a time to slow down again. Three-digit temperatures prompt siestas. Code-orange days mean offices are closed. Shorter summer business hours and month-long closings — common in pre-air-conditioned America — return. . . . Saying goodbye to AC means saying hello to the world. With more people spending more time outdoors — particularly in the late afternoon and evening, when temperatures fall more quickly outside than they do inside — neighborhoods see a boom in spontaneous summertime socializing. Rather than cowering alone in chilly home-entertainment rooms, neighbors get to know one another. Because there are more people outside, streets in high-crime areas become safer.”
Interesting. But whether it takes place in Washington or anywhere else on earth, the attractiveness of this scenario doesn’t stop it from being nonsense of the highest order.
For one thing, it’s unrealistic. Our “physical addiction to air-conditioned air” comes from living in hot homes (many of them built with no consideration for thermal efficiency) and working in hot buildings (the great majority of them built as tightly-sealed greenhouses; short of throwing a chair through a glass wall, the HVAC system is the only ventilation). Trying to exist in these structures without air conditioning would be virtually impossible. And as to the idea that American businesses will considerately “slow down,” build siestas into their schedules, shorten summer business hours and cancel work outright on the hottest days — yeah, right.
The other problem with the non-air conditioning scenario is that there’s a lot of arrogance packed into it. Sneering at a “physical addiction” to conditioned air is more than a bit nervy; so is the implication that there’s something wrong with you if you can’t stand “three-digit temperatures.” (Some people become sickened by excessive heat. Others even die from it, whether or not they get siestas.) And the insistence that you will spend time outdoors, engaging in “spontaneous socializing,” that you and your neighbors will “get to know one another,” that your streets will “become safer” . . . rather presumptuous. Also naive.
After a century of providing heat relief, no one can seriously believe that air conditioning will vanish, any more than refrigerators or computers or any other power-gobbling devices will vanish. Actually, it’s spreading — Chinese citizens recently bought over 20 million air conditioners in a single year. Rather than demand that people live without air conditioning, better to find a new version of air conditioning. It’s true that the compressor-powered, refrigerant-cooled system of 1902 needs reworking to fit today’s needs. But there are alternatives waiting in the wings, some of them usable today and others in development: geothermal and cold-water and solar-powered cooling, green buildings that supervise their own natural ventilation, systems that cool entire buildings with cheaply manufactured ice, even a prototype machine called a DEVap that can achieve cool dry air without refrigerants and with 90% less energy. Demand will spur the perfection of a viable substitute, perhaps more than one. As with Carrier’s original system, it will probably make its first appearance in large-size commercial form, then will shrink in size and price for home use.
Mr. Carrier would quite probably approve of this plan. And I bet he’d be troubled that “air conditioning” has become a dirty word.
Salvatore Basile was educated at the Boston Conservatory and The Juilliard School and began his career as a professional musician. After penning various music-related articles, he entered the field of social commentary with his history Fifth Avenue Famous: The Extraordinary Story of Music at St. Patrick’s Cathedral (Fordham). His new book, Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything(Fordham), will be published in September.
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