Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything

by Salvatore Basile

“[A] history of air conditioning, chronicling the numerous gimmicks, failed attempts, con jobs, and eventual successes . . . a surprisingly interesting journey.” —San Francisco Book Review   The air conditioner is often hailed as one of the modern world’s greatest inventions—yet nearly as often blamed for global disaster. It has changed everything from architecture to people’s food habits; saved countless lives, and caused countless deaths. First appearing in 1902, when Willis Carrier, an engineer barely out of college, developed the “Apparatus for Treating Air,” everyone assumed it would instantly change the world. But the story of air conditioning and its rise to ubiquity is far from simple.   In Cool, Salvatore Basile tracks two fascinating the struggle to perfect an effective cooling device, and the effort to convince people that they actually needed such a thing. With a cast of characters ranging from Leonardo da Vinci to Richard Nixon and Felix the Cat, Cool showcases the myriad reactions to air conditioning as it was developed and introduced to the world. Here is a unique perspective on a common how we came to rely on it today, and how it might change radically tomorrow.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Technology

289 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2014

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saw this on the library shelf and couldn't resist. Growing up in the hellish humidity of Houston, Texas, which I just managed to survive by way of the city's equally pervasive air-conditioning, I've always had a horrified fascination with life before the invention of coolth (a real term). Turns out it was worse than I imagined. Even more nightmarish was the fact that the development of cool comfort technology was infinitely retarded by the baffling if not lingering attitude that insufferable heat is something one should just tough out, despite untold numbers of people dropping dead from overheating. Almost as appalling was the layers of clothing people wore and how buildings used to be designed to minimize ventilation and maximize heating by installing huge windows or skylights that wouldn't open. Instead everyone stuck to the rule of thumb: horses sweat, men perspire, women glow. SMH. The least surprising tidbit from this book was finding out the MTA took their sweet time installing AC in all their cars (early 1990s!). The halls of Washington, DC, were almost as ridiculously slow in cooling their chambers. Over a period of decades, hundreds of politicians died on the job because they couldn't figure out how to cool the House, Senate, and White House. (Insert Trump comment here.) For those concerned about environmental issues, it's good to know we have and continue to develop new, more green forms of cool comfort, but as usual, society is scared to upgrade itself.

[❀Aimee❀ Just one more page... · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not just about Air Conditioning

The air conditioning history was surprisingly interesting. However, I was more interested in how the book showed that our search for relief from the heat shaped and changed our own history.

First, we are taken through the history of our struggle to stay cool long before the advent of modern cooling. Then we explore the inventions and mis-inventions, the trials and errors, and causes of delays to the fruition of modern cooling.

Next the reader is taken on a ride through American history and how cooling (or lack thereof) affected daily life, entertainment, commerce, politics, and more. The many topics included were: theater, movies, radio production, food industry, hotels, early phone operators, architecture in big cities (sky scrapers), cars, early computers, the house of commons, the Senate chamber and the House of Representatives, politicians, trains, railroads, subways, wars, revolving doors, shopping/commerce, NASA, big cities and small towns.

Interesting tidbits:
Willis Carrier was the first person to come up with reliable cooling with attention to detail and continually improving on his designs. He was also brilliant with marketing air conditioning. While his designs led to his wealth he never installed one in his own home.


When JFK and Nixon were running for president during a televised debate, their aids were literally fighting over the thermostat for the comfort of their candidate. Nixon wanted the air very cold and Kennedy not so. In the debate, you can see Nixon frequently wiping the sweat from his head and neck.


With air conditioned tall buildings, windows began to be sealed. This led to window washers not being able to open the windows to stand on the ledges to clean the outside of the windows (they way it was typically done).

A new way to clean windows with a "mechanized 'window-washing gondola,' suspended from the roof" (or what we are now used to seeing). This new invention was quite the attraction when first used.

Though Lucille Ball had plenty of experience on film sets for over 10 years, she had her first TV appearance on a game show in 1952. The TV lighting was so hot and uncomfortable, she swore she would never do television again.


One of the first movies that included air conditioning as a topic was "The Seven year Itch" with Marilyn Monroe being enamored with the neighbor's air-conditioning.


Later in the book we see how rolling blackouts cause Americans to start contemplating ecology and environmentalism, leading to changes in air conditioning design (along with other earth-friendly changes).

Before considering breaking into Watergate, it was briefly considered to destroy the air conditioning at the 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami Beach. Things might have turned out differently had they gone with the previous idea instead.

This was book was quite the interesting read, though I have to admit I did skim a few sections.

Anyone working in air conditioning, history buffs, and anyone who watches the occasional documentary will find interesting sections in this book.

I received a free digital copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Trilety Wade · Rating 5 out of 5]

While people chuckled when I told them I was reading a book about the history of air conditioning, they didn't laugh when I told them tidbits of the book. This book is full of thought provoking and interesting stories. One of the themes of the book, that I was most shocked to learn, was how slow people were to adopt air conditioning for its comfort capabilities - instead it was used mainly to cool products, not people. . . capitalism at its strangest. Another running theme through the book is the evolution and politicization of cooling of the White House. A great read about invention, humanity, and design - enjoy!

[Mia Anti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this book while searching though my audiobook streaming app for non-fiction that’s actually teaches you something new instead of the true crime slop, self help trash and celebrity autobiographies more akin to fantasy than lord of the rings.

Interesting information and talked about how it’s not just about the AC system itself x but how it has affected politics, cultures, industry etc .

A good read

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I mentioned to friends that I was reading a history of air conditioning....their eyes glazed over and they muttered words like "As one does". But, actually, I have found it quite interesting. The book is very much focused on the USA. I guess that is probably reasonable because that's where most of the big innovations in air conditioning seemed to have happened but it really hardly mentions the rest of the world. One thing I found fascinating was, that despite suffering in the heat and humidity of north American summers, many people were reluctant to tamper with the natural order. Heating was apparently ok but the climate was "god given" and it was considered ungodly to be trying to cool the air by many. The book is probably overfull of descriptions of perspiring patrons (or workplaces, homes, trains, theatres, shops, cars, etc.) Right up until the 1920's it seems , most of the attempts to cool the air involved blowing air over ice (which had to be preserved from the winter in most cases). From antiquity there had been attempts by the rich to cool themselves using ice and in the late 1800's many of these attempts involved various engineered devices to combine chilling the air via streams of water or by blowing the air through flaps of over ice chilled pipes. None of them seemed to work at all effectively. Humidity was a major problem with all these devices. Though around 1870 there were various attempts to adopt the new technology of mechanical refrigeration to cool the air. The New York Stock Exchange appeared to be one of the few successful adoptees of such technology ion 1903.
There is an interesting story of an inventor in Florida. John Gorrie...... who actually invented a type of compression/expansion cooling device around 1850 ...which never took off. ...
Each time, Gorrie amazed the guests and saved the day by providing generous amounts of ice, manufactured by his machine. (The French consul presented his ice on silver platters, ceremonially carried into the dining room by waiters. The church ladies got theirs in large sardine cans.) Now Gorrie and his contraption were beginning to receive serious attention. His own interest in the device had always been for its therapeutic value rather than its profit possibilities. Nevertheless, enthused by the possibility of a rosy future and encouraged by his friends, he decided to patent the invention.
What happened next was never directly linked to Tudor (the ice baron of the time) . However, Gorrie was stunned to find himself, and his invention, facing a blank wall of universal disbelief. When a man wrote to the editors of Scientific American, asking for information on Gorrie’s alleged ice-making machine, they sniffed, “We do not know of any feasible plan for producing ice artificially except at an expense so great as to preclude its manufacture for common purposes. If there was any person in our country who could make ice economically, he would not be at a loss where to go make his fortune.” The New-York Daily Globe labeled Gorrie a “crank” who “thinks he can make ice as good as God Almighty.”
Then around 1905 Willis Carrier started using a more scientific approach to air conditioning and built some machines that actually seemed to work. ". Manufacturers realized that a Carrier installation was far more thorough than most of its competitors’, as Willis Carrier planned systems by taking into account not only the size of a building but also its location, the number of bodies that occupied it and the number of hours they would be there, the power demands of the machinery, and even the building’s construction." Around 1922, by then in charge of his own company, he developed the rotary compressor for air conditioning which really seemed to change the industry. "Carrier solved the problem when he developed the “centrifugal compressor”—smaller, cheaper, and, best of all, ammonia-free, using the new nonflammable refrigerant dielene, which had been around for some time but used only as a dry-cleaning fluid".
Carrier was asked to air-condition New York’s Rivoli in 1925. This was an extremely high-visibility installation, and Carrier himself supervised the whole thing.
However, the bigger triumph was for air conditioning itself, which soon became indelibly linked in the public mind with moviegoing—the first venue in which patrons let management know, loud and clear, that comfortably cool surroundings were absolutely required … especially when the cool comfort cost the patrons nothing more than the price of a ticket........the Rivoli recouped the entire $ 65,000 price of its Carrier installation in an astonishing three months. And theaters without cooling were doomed to extinction. Carrier alone outfitted more than 300 theaters over the next five years, while a plethora of imitators sprang up to offer their own equipment.

Strangely, while it was happening the result of all this activity was overlooked by many observers. But in fact it was a staggering development. For the first time ever in human history, there was a hot-weather refuge available to overheated people,* no matter their class or income level—a refuge that was easily affordable, and dependably cool.....
by the summer of 1927 newspaper ads announced that Rio Rita’s audiences would be pampered in the “COOLEST THEATRE IN THE WORLD.”

That did it: Bit by bit, air conditioning began to show up on Broadway. Only three months after the Ziegfeld opened, the Keith-Albee vaudeville circuit announced that they were installing air conditioning in six of their New York theaters, including the Palace, and one in Cleveland. Later in the year, a new Hammerstein’s Theatre opened with an “elaborate air conditioning system … one of the greatest ventilating systems ever installed in a theatre.” At the end of 1932, the 6,000-seat Radio City Music Hall opened in Rockefeller Center with every amenity known to the art of stage production, including Carrier air conditioning.
And in department stores ir conditioning became such a draw that, no matter the cost, department stores found it profitable to install it, and stores that had it in the basement made sure to install it on other floors. Hudson’s was a perfect example: Soon after the basement system was operating, Carrier was called back to air-condition the first three floors. Within a decade, the entire store was air-conditioned.

Then the movie sets: MGM was one of the first studios to respond to the problem, installing air conditioning on a sound stage in 1927. And the following year, when the Fox Film Corporation plunged $ 10,000,000 into a “gigantic concrete sound-proof city” of new sound stages, the Los Angeles Times described their ventilation with Hollywood hype: And Radio:......NBC, the first nationwide radio network, was formed in 1926 with WEAF as its flagship station. New quarters would definitely be needed. To get more space, the network moved in 1927 to five floors of a Fifth Avenue building in Midtown; to get more comfort, they called in Carrier to design air conditioning for its eight studios, control room, and reception rooms. Even the BBC would follow suit when it built its ultramodern Broadcasting House facilities in 1931 and equipped them with a Carrier system.

And with the railways: the Pullman Company, which for decades had been criticized for the stuffiness of its berths, made its own attempt in 1927 when it installed a cooling system in one of its cars … only to rip out the system four months later. Train travel remained, as it had been for nearly a century, an uncomfortable—and very grimy— So the Baltimore & Ohio asked Carrier to give it one more try in 1929. This time, the centrifugal compressor made it possible to design a system that could not only work but also fit on board. After months of testing, the result was installed in the spring of 1930 in the elegant Martha Washington dining car, running on the Northeast Corridor. Within months of the Martha Washington’s unveiling, the Santa Fe Chief got an air-conditioned diner, and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad installed a few of its own. Even though air conditioning could cost $ 5,000 per car, the increase in ridership was so astounding that railroads scrambled to install cooling on their trains—

Air-conditioned movie houses did spring up everywhere in America, but primarily in America; however, air-conditioned trains sprang up all over the globe, even making it to Australia by 1937. In the world of air conditioning, its adoption by railroads was the standout success story of the 1930s.

This was in direct contrast to the story of automobile air conditioning, one of the decade’s most resounding flops. It was obvious that there was a real demand for automotive climate control. General Motors began working on the idea in 1933; but that year, instead of air conditioning, the public was introduced to … No-Draft Ventilation. This was nothing more than the small triangular windows in each corner of the car— By 1942 there were tens of millions of cars on American roads. Fewer than 4,000 of them were air-conditioned. In 1955, 10 percent of American cars were equipped with air conditioning; in 1960, 20 percent; in 1965, 23 percent; in 1968, 40 percent.

the first air-conditioned “skyscraper” would be built in Texas. The trade journal Buildings celebrated it in late 1928 with an article entitled “San Antonio’s Latest and Largest Office Building the Milam Building, Twenty-One Stories, Reinforced Concrete Frame, Has Many Novel Features, Including a Very Complete Air-Conditioning Plant.”

Sales of air conditioning equipment in 1932 totaled $ 8,000,000; five years later, the total was ten times that amount. The Washington Post claimed that air conditioning was “one of the key industries in lifting the country out of the Depression.”
the Tower’s landmark neighbor, the Wrigley Building, decided to install air conditioning in 1936.* Those two projects were great successes, if only because air conditioning had finally been accepted as a cut-and-dried science: Follow the rules and the system would work. in 1952 when Lever House—as the New York Times gushed, “the newest and glassiest of all”—rose on Park Avenue.......Almost at once, Lever House became the new standard, its features copied and “interpreted” in office buildings the world over. And air conditioning was largely responsible, not only for the operation, but the very look of these glass towers. Whenever 20 percent of the office buildings in any particular city included air conditioning, the other buildings would be forced to include it “to maintain their first class status."

With home air conditioning:....After the war, production of air conditioners had resumed, and right along with it the old complaint that they were too expensive. Throughout the late 1940s, the average window unit hovered near the $ 400 mark (in modern terms, nearly $ 3,500. With an air conditioner priced at a minimum of $ 350 and a television set available for less than $ 200, most people were opting for the TV. At the end of 1950, television sales had rocketed beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, while air conditioning representatives glumly reported that “production far outstripped demand.” Sure enough, before the end of the year, more than 365,000 air conditioners had streamed out of American stores. And, as opposed to central cooling, whose blurbs were directed at The Man of the House, room units now were offered in ads intended to appeal to The Little Woman. By 1955, one in twenty-two (5%) American households had at least one air conditioner. The 1960 census showed that close to 13 percent of American homes had air conditioning in at least one room, with the number climbing all the time (it would jump to nearly 37 percent by 1970).

But, along with success came worries about the national energy supply..... first being voiced to the public, the words “environmentalism” and “ecology” began to pop up, even though they were used primarily as cocktail-party chatter. The first Earth Day took place in April 1970; And four months later the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began its work with a strong tilt toward energy conservation. American air conditioning represented more than half of all the air conditioning used in the world.
There were moves to design more energy efficient buildings. In 1992, the National Audubon Society moved its New York headquarters to an abandoned 1891 building on Lower Broadway......the renovation was projected to save $ 100,000 each year in energy costs. Within a year, it was pronounced “one of the lowest energy-consuming office buildings in the country.”* A particularly imaginative solution to the problem was erected in 1996: Eastgate Centre, a combination office block and shopping mall in Harare, Zimbabwe............an extraordinarily sophisticated “natural cooling” system that operates twenty-four hours a day to shunt the air upward through each floor and out through a series of chimneys. The system is so carefully planned that it keeps the complex at a uniform temperature while using only 10 percent of the energy spent in standard air conditioning. And in New York, Four Times Square......... When it opened in 1999, neither its 48-story height nor its steel-and-glass modernism was out of the ordinary; but as “the world’s first green skyscraper,” it was an absolute sensation. Even super-skyscrapers became green; in 2001, Taiwan’s 101-story Taipei 101, for a few years the world’s tallest building, installed an immense plant that manufactured ice during overnight hours, when electricity was cheapest, and used the ice throughout the day as a cold source that allowed the building to use a fraction of the air conditioning equipment it would otherwise have needed.
One of the most promising efforts, sponsored by the U.S. government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, made news in the summer of 2010 with the unveiling of the Dessicant Enhanced eVaporative air conditioner, or DEVap. It's claimed that it will be able to cool and dry air while using up to 90 percent less energy than the most efficient standard air conditioner. Let's see.
Conclusions: By the year 2014, more than 87 percent of American homes had air conditioning “in one or more rooms.” Some estimates are closer to 90 percent. Cars have an even higher percentage, more than 98 percent. In 2008, Forbes reported that an astounding 20,000,000 air conditioners were being sold in China each year; by 2010, American Scientist noted that the number had climbed to 50,000,000. [And 100 Million in 2020....China has 37% of household world A/C units ].

Scientific American noted that twenty-eight out of the thirty largest cities in the world were in tropical climates. And as they develop, “the demand for air conditioning in these gigantic mega-cities … is going to skyrocket.”

There is even a throw away line there that air conditioning works to absorb the heat from the indoors and shunt it to the outdoors, a simple process of physical science, and one that occurs every moment in the machinery of every air conditioner in the world. So it's possible that air conditioning might be contributing significantly to global warming. But it's also significant that, in 1986, the Consumers Union named air conditioning as one of the top fifty inventions “that have most influenced our lives.”

[Jadin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Born in the south, I found myself interested in what life was like before air conditioning. We don’t feel the weather here, hopping from air conditioned home, to car, to work, and back again. I did not realize how long it took air conditioning to become popularized, or how many iterations it went through in the process. Disturbing too to learn that it still has to evolve to become sustainable. A fascinating read, the historical perspective on air conditioning you did not know you needed.

[Umar Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm actually not a big fan of air conditioning, but found this history of the invention very interesting.

[Leonore · Rating 2 out of 5]

While its interesting to read about inventions that dramatically changed the world. This book could have been written a bit more interestingly. Also not enough time was spent on the geo political changes that air conditioning made. Also it was written more as an American phenomen.

[Susan Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting read about the development and implementation of technology around cooling our work and home environment. The book covers a wide range of cooling topics, from the heat produced by lights in the film industry to the old fashioned ice with a fan blowing across for heat relief. The book was somewhat technical covering about every invention to promote cooled air. I was a bit disappointed that very few of the pages were dedicated to the geography changes in the US due to the development of low cost air conditioning or the continuing issues of power usage from more and more cooling due to climate change throughout the world.

[Ian Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of us of a certain generation take AC for granted, and personally I hadn’t had much insight into the intriguing history of its development and its failures and successes. I would have enjoyed more on its adoption and implementation in the latter half of the 20th century, but then I suppose that by era of history, the technology had been pretty much refined for widespread adoption across the sunbelt and the west. I also would have enjoyed more on its adoption outside of the U.S. but overall it was a good quick read.

[Kay Hudson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a page turner, but interesting. Seems to be well researched. I'm still trying to imagine early "air conditioning" consisting of fans blowing over tons of ice -- a history of the ice industry might be interesting, too. I do remember car shopping in the 90s when a/c was still an add-on option in many cars -- hard to imagine that today.

[Bailey Thornton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much has been said and romanticized by people insisting they were born in the wrong era. But me being born at a time when temperature control is the absolute norm? God got that exactly right.

SUCH an interesting read!!

[Gary Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating in the way air conditioning was accepted by the American public.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly engaging for a potentially dull subject.

[Eric Chevlen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book takes us through the impact of air conditioning on modern life. The rise of industry in the states of the Old Confederacy would be unimaginable without air conditioning. Similarly, modern movie theaters, and thus the flowering of cinema, depended on it. A criticism of the book is that it spends too much time on the details of engineering at the expense of the social impact of air conditioning.

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had no idea that airconditioning had such a long history. Interesting, conversational, with some nice illustrations.

[Deb Holmes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating but a bit tedious at the same time

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating look at how air conditioning impacted society, focusing on the United States. This is a topic I never really thought about, but air conditioning really DID change everything!