Look back for a moment to the world before the widespread use of refrigeration and air conditioning—a world that was still very much present well into the first decades of the 20th century. Only fresh foods that could be grown locally were available, and they had to be purchased and used on a daily basis. Meat was bought during the daily trip to the butcher's; the milkman made his rounds every morning. If you could afford weekly deliveries of ice blocks—harvested in the winter from frozen northern lakes—you could keep some perishable foods around for 2 or 3 days in an icebox. As for the nonexistence of air conditioning, it made summers in southern cities—and many northern ones—insufferable. The nation's capital was a virtual ghost town in the summer months. As late as the 1940s, the 60-story Woolworth Building and other skyscrapers in New York City were equipped with window awnings on every floor to keep direct sunlight from raising temperatures even higher than they already were. Inside the skyscrapers, ceiling and table fans kept the humid air from open windows at least moving around. Throughout the country, homes were built with natural cooling in mind. Ceilings were high, porches were deep and shaded, and windows were placed to take every possible advantage of cross-ventilation. Look back for a moment to the world before the widespread use of refrigeration and air conditioning—a world that was still very much present well into the first decades of the 20th century. Only fresh foods that could be grown locally were available, and they had to be purchased and used on a daily basis. Meat was bought during the daily trip to the butcher's; the milkman made his rounds every morning. If you could afford weekly deliveries of ice blocks—harvested in the winter from frozen northern lakes—you could keep some perishable foods around for 2 or 3 days in an icebox. As for the nonexistence of air conditioning, it made summers in southern cities—and many northern ones—insufferable. The nation's capital was a virtual ghost town in the summer months. As late as the 1940s, the 60-story Woolworth Building and other skyscrapers in New York City were equipped with window awnings on every floor to keep direct sunlight from raising temperatures even higher than they already were. Inside the skyscrapers, ceiling and table fans kept the humid air from open windows at least moving around. Throughout the country, homes were built with natural cooling in mind. Ceilings were high, porches were deep and shaded, and windows were placed to take every possible advantage of cross-ventilation. By the end of the century all that had changed. Fresh foods of all kinds were available just about anywhere in the country all year round—and what wasn't available fresh could be had in convenient frozen form, ready to pop into the microwave. The milkman was all but gone and forgotten, and the butcher now did his work behind a counter at the supermarket. Indeed, many families concentrated the entire week's food shopping into one trip to the market, stocking the refrigerator with perishables that would last a week or more. And on the air-conditioning side of the equation, just about every form of indoor space—office buildings, factories, hospitals, and homes—was climate-controlled and comfortable throughout the year, come heat wave or humidity. New homes looked quite different, with lower rooflines and ceilings, porches that were more for ornament than practicality, and architectural features such as large plate glass picture windows and sliding glass doors. Office buildings got a new look as well, with literally acres of glass stretching from street level to the skyscraping upper floors. Perhaps most significant of all, as a result of air conditioning, people started moving south, reversing a northward demographic trend that had continued through the first half of the century. Since 1940 the nation's fastest-growing states have been in the Southeast and the Southwest, regions that could not have supported large metropolitan communities before air conditioning made the summers tolerable.
Mechanical refrigeration, whether for refrigeration itself or for air conditioning, relies on a closed system in which a refrigerant—basically a compound of elements with a low boiling point—circulates through sets of coils that absorb and dissipate heat as the refrigerant is alternately compressed and allowed to expand. In a refrigerator the circulating refrigerant draws heat from the interior of the refrigerator, leaving it cool; in an air conditioner, coils containing refrigerant perform a similar function by drawing heat and moisture from room air. Mechanical refrigeration, whether for refrigeration itself or for air conditioning, relies on a closed system in which a refrigerant—basically a compound of elements with a low boiling point—circulates through sets of coils that absorb and dissipate heat as the refrigerant is alternately compressed and allowed to expand. In a refrigerator the circulating refrigerant draws heat from the interior of the refrigerator, leaving it cool; in an air conditioner, coils containing refrigerant perform a similar function by drawing heat and moisture from room air. This may sound simple, but it took the pioneering genius of a number of engineers and inventors to work out the basic principles of cooling and humidity control. Their efforts resulted in air conditioning systems that not only were a real benefit to the average person by the middle of the 20th century but also made possible technologies in fields ranging from medical and scientific research to space travel.
Prominent among air-conditioning pioneers was Willis Haviland Carrier. In 1902, Carrier, a recent graduate of Cornell University's School of Engineering, was working for the Buffalo Forge Company on heating and cooling systems. According to Carrier, one foggy night while waiting on a train platform in Pittsburgh he had a sudden insight into a problem he had been puzzling over for a while—the complex relationship between air temperature, humidity, and dew point. He realized that air could be dried by saturating it with chilled water to induce condensation. After a number of experimental air conditioning installations, he patented Dew Point Control in 1907, a device that, for the first time, allowed for the precise control of temperature and humidity necessary for sophisticated industrial processes. Carrier's early air conditioner was put to use right away by a Brooklyn printer who could not produce a good color image because fluctuations of heat and humidity in his plant kept altering the paper's dimensions and misaligning the colored inks. Carrier's system, which had the cooling power of 108,000 pounds of ice a day, solved the problem. That same principle today makes possible the billion-dollar facilities required to produce the microcircuits that are the backbone of the computer industry. Air conditioners were soon being used in a variety of industrial venues. The term itself was coined in 1906 by a man named Stuart Cramer, who had applied for a patent for a device that would add humidity to the air in his textile mill, reducing static electricity and making the textile fibers easier to work with. Air-conditioning systems also benefited a host of other businesses, enumerated by Carrier himself: "lithography, the manufacture of candy, bread, high explosives and photographic films, and the drying and preparing of delicate hygroscopic materials such as macaroni and tobacco." At the same time, it did not go unnoticed that workers in these air-conditioned environments were more productive, with significantly lower absentee rates. Comfort cooling, as it became known, might just be a profitable commodity in itself. |
