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100th Anniversary of Air Conditioning 409

Posted by chrisd from the air-conditioning-makes-computers-happy dept.
RealPerseus writes "The Buffalo News reports today in this article that the 100th annivsary of air conditioning is upon us. Who would have thought that air conditioning was invented in Buffalo?"
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100th Anniversary of Air Conditioning More

100th Anniversary of Air Conditioning

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  • now I know how to really cool my PC.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PhreakOfTime ( 588141 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @03:20AM (#3915077) Homepage
    Well, finally...an old-school hacker gets some credit. Some guy working in a factory, invents such an important device for modern society...bravo Mr. Carrier

    • Carrier (Score:5, Funny)

      by benh57 ( 525452 ) <bhines@alumnREDH ... edu minus distro> on Friday July 19, 2002 @06:33AM (#3915450) Homepage
      And in an amazing coincidence, it was Mr Carrier's grandson "No" who invented the computer modem. He left his mark on his invention with the familiar signoff..

      NO CARRIER

  • What more can I say but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by errorlevel ( 415281 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @03:21AM (#3915083) Homepage
    Cool!

  • This has to be cheating. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Corvaith ( 538529 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @03:24AM (#3915090) Homepage
    Here I am, sitting in a tiny room with a very small oscillating fan trying in vain to fight the muggy late-night heat. In the other corner, my computer is quite happily chugging away, heating the room up even more.

    And, here, a story about air conditioning. That I don't have. Meanies.
    • You have my sympathies. My house doesn't have central air, but I have a big wall unit in the main floor and a window unit on the top floor. The basement, however, has nothing. Note that is where my home office is. Who would think the basement is the hottest room in the house. I even moved my four servers into another room so it's just me and my PC and the room temp is still pegged at 80 degrees. Argh!

  • Graduate of two high schools? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Weffs11 ( 323188 ) <<weffrey> <at> <gmail.net>> on Friday July 19, 2002 @03:24AM (#3915095) Homepage
    From the article.
    "Carrier graduated from both Angola High School and the old Hutchinson-Central High School in Buffalo."

    How do you graduate from two high schools?

  • Not much there. (Score:5, Informative)

    by spongman ( 182339 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @03:25AM (#3915096)
    A few quotes and the standard journalist rambling. It might be appropriate on this day to find out/brush up on how they work. [howstuffworks.com]

  • read this the other day... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Servo ( 9177 )
    I read this story the other day. I found it quite interesting that they were using AC in airplanes several years before it was adopted in most buildings.

    • Re:read this the other day... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @03:59AM (#3915201) Homepage
      AC was also an important feature of the U.S. Navy's fleet submarines in World War II. By keeping the temperature and humidity down, it made the long war patrols in the Pacific bearable for the men and the equipment on the submarine.

      • AC was also an important feature of the U.S. Navy's fleet submarines in World War II

        I was a crew member of one a few years ago. We could stay submerged for weeks or months. Air conditioning was pretty vital. We had two huge R-114 units. Man, it got hot during drills involving loss of non-vital electrical loads ...

  • Anybody knows whether there are studies about the impact that air conditioning may have on the climate? expecially in cities/towns.

    At least the microclimate near air conditioned buildings is influenced: sometimes you can't just pass near them because of hot air.

    I know that there are some places around the world where you couldn't live without AC, and that there are places where you need it for computers and other sensible stuff, but I feel that in most places it is abused. (Things like 18C inside when outside there is only a perfectly tolerable 25C)

    • IIRC, I read a few weeks ago that Tokyo's had twice as many 30+ degC days per summer, attributable mainly to aircon outlets on the roofs of buildings. They have some plan to pipe water from the bay and do underground heat exchange, in the hope of reducing the temperature by a bit. I can't find a copy of the story on the web, though...
      • It's called the heat island effect, and it happens everywhere, not just Tokyo. If you live in any sort of urban area you know the temperature is always 5 degrees or so hotter than it is in the suburbs. It's not only due to A/C, but also greenhouse gases (in fact, I'll bet it's more the exhaust coming out of A/C units and the gases contained in them that's the problem, rather than the direct heating of the air).

        The Japanese are always doing crazy, innovative things to solve problems, though, so more power to them if they want to use water pipes to cool the city. But it's not just a problem in Tokyo - it's just as much a problem in New York and elsewhere (and it's not just because of A/C).
    • A very interesting concept, however I don't think it would work this way.

      Considering the system as a whole (and disregarding inefficiencies of the A/C system), the average heat energy of the system including both the inside and outside the house is going to be the same. Thus, if you keep running the A/C, your house either has to keep getting colder (and the outside hotter), or there has to be some loss of heat difference somewhere. This loss, obviously, is the outside heat seeping back into the house, weather it be via air every time you open a door, or conduction through the walls. This cools off the outside. In the end, it's all equal.

      Now it's also true, as thermodynamics second law tells us, that our AC system cannot be perfectly efficient, and the energy loss will be in the form of an overall heat increase. However, I don't believe this, even if used by everyone in a city, is going to be enough to noticably affect the climate.
    • but I feel that in most places it is abused.

      One thing that really pisses me off is the total misunderstanding of the thermostat. How often have you seen someone on a hot day throw the thermostat down to 65? Obviously, most people think the number on the thermostat is the temperature of the air that comes out of the vent.

      I once went into a grocery store in the middle of summer, and it was COLD in the store. I asked the cashier: "Aren't you cold?" She replied: "Yeah, but we don't mind, since it's so hot outside." ??

      I think a series of public service ads featuring a brief explanation of the thermostat, plus a recommended temperature, would go a long way toward reducing abuse.
    • Well, I'm no engineer, but I work with some, who specialice in, of all things, air conditioning, and one of the things I've learned is:

      1) The "perfect" temperature to aim for is 17 C, as both humans and electrical equipment will heat up the air to up around 20 C.

      2) If your building is affected by solar heating, you cannot simply use passive cooling/convection to cool it down, and the temperature will rise quite quickly to intolerable levels (more than 25 C)

      3) If it's sunny and 25 C outside, and your building is slightly succeptible to solar heating, it will rather quickly become REALLY hot inside if you don't use airconditioning. I know this myself, as we DON'T have any kind of AC in our building (even though that's what we do for a living), and if it's 20 C+ outside and sunny, it will rise to an abyssmal 5 C hotter than that inside; I guess it's because we don't have movement of air inside, as opening windows usually results in too powerfull drafts throwing papers all over the office and leaving me to find them and sort them out again - yes, I'm speaking from experience :-(

      Anyway, modern air conditioning can recycle up to 95% of the heat you suck out of a building, so in the winter time hardly any heat is wasted, but in the summertime there's really no need to recycle it.
      • Pardon me while I laugh at some of the numbers being thrown around...

        Perfect temperature 17 C (that's 62.6 F)? Do you want me wearing a sweater year round?

        Intolerable is >25 C (77 F)? Uh... I keep my house above that in the summer. In fact, I find considerably warmer temperatures perfectly fine if the humidity is low enough. The power companies generally recommend keeping your house no cooler than about 25 C (76-78 F) because when you cool below that you start burning energy fast and 25 C is very well within most people's comfort zones.

        All I can think is that you're from a country with a much colder climate than most of the US.

  • Air conditioning has destroyed architecture (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @03:39AM (#3915139)
    8' (as opposed to 10') ceilings, poor placement of windows leading to no cross-ventilation, cutting down all the trees around a lot to ease construction but destroying the shade, the death of the porch.

    I love air conditioning, but I want to hate it. . .
    • the death of the porch.

      Methinks Television had more to do with that than AC.
    • I know. The house I grew up in had all of those features you love. Inside the house it was still hot as fuck in the summer, even at night. Can't sleep outside in this part of Virginia as the bugs would drain you dry. I sweated my ass off every summer for 18 years. I don't miss it. 'Course, after I left for college my parents had central AC istalled....BASTARDS...:)
      • I grew up in west central Wisconsin, on the Mississippi river. We had a semi-victorian house, tall ceilings, porches, all that stuff. No central air. Exactly ONE box fan upstairs, usually pointed at my parents room. Talk about a suffocating situation. I finally ended up getting air conditioning about 5 years after moving out, because I chose to become 18 at the height of the late seventies/early eighties recession/depression. There was absolutely no work around for an inexperienced kid. I also blame that recession for my not going to college. sigh...

        Hey prisoner, is the insidespaces website your work? If so, very nice, good design. Email me, I want to talk.
    • Bastian,

      However, modern air conditioning has made it possible to do two things:

      1. Live in desert environments. You wouldn't want to live in Phoenix, AZ without air conditioning, especially with temperatures in the daytime hitting 45 degrees C. and higher during the summer.

      2. Live in warm, high-humidity environments. Try living in the southeastern USA with temperatures in the high 30's C. and 75-plus percent humidity during the summer without air conditioning.

      A big benefit of air conditioning is a huge boon to museums. Works of art and historical items are much more easily preserved in temperature/humidity controlled environments that air conditioning systems provide.
      • You're so right!! Before AC the southeastern U.S. was completely unpopulated by humans! AC made it possible!1!!
      • This is exactly right. In the book Dot Con it is pointed out that AC has probably had a bigger effect on the US economy than the Internet.

        And indeed, it has led to its own boom in housing prices in the South of the US. If it wasn't for AC who would live in Texas or Florida ?

        This isn't to say AC is all good, as other posters point out it is over used in the US, but that doesn't reduce its importance.

      • A big benefit of air conditioning is a huge boon to museums. Works of art and historical items are much more easily preserved in temperature/humidity controlled environments that air conditioning systems provide.

        We went to the MFA in Boston 2-3 years ago in the summer and I was kind of appalled at the lack of A/C in vast stretches of the museum, including the furniture and decorative arts wings. I'm sure paintings benefit greatly from stable environments, but the wood furniture REALLY benefits from not constantly warping the summer and contracting in the winter.

        Although one could reason that most of the furniture made prior to the invention of A/C had been naturally subject to that and the woodworkers of the era built a lot of floating joints that could tolerate it, but its got to be hard on the laminates and inlays.
    • Sorry, but standardized building materials has had a lot more to do with destroying architecture than AC has. Most of the houses built in america today use standard sheets of plywood to form the 'skin', and sheet rock on interior walls, both have a standard size of 4' x 8' (hence the ceiling height). Standardized sizes have led to a reduction in the need for highly skilled labor in construction than is evidenced by the decline in truly skilled carpenters and masons, no real skill needed anymore, just a table saw to cut the excess. And the fact that groups like Habitat for Humanity (they do great work, not dissing what they do) can gather a group of everyday people together, most of whom have never built a house, and knock out a building in a couple months working mostly on the weekends.

      So if your going to blame something for the decline of architecture, start with building materials being similar to legos, and not AC.

    • Air conditioning has also made it possible for the US Congress to be in session all year long. Time was they disappeared from D.C. in early June and came back in October. Now they are here most all year long. Is that necessarily a good thing?

      And think of the poor Brits at their embassy in D.C.--they used to get topical duty pay!
  • On slashdot, we celebrate and wish Code Red, one of the biggest pains in the ass in recent memory, a 'happy birthday' .

    Then we drop a note to... point out that it's the anniversary of airconditioning.

  • Thanks? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Comrade Brightski ( 450221 ) <sabrig0.engr@uky@edu> on Friday July 19, 2002 @03:44AM (#3915156) Homepage
    This is probably a pretty unpopular comment to make to a crowd of geeks in the heat of summer, but I'll say it anyways. While air conditioning is a great scientific and engineering achievement, I'm not sure that it's been a great advantage to society. It's done very little to improve the quality of life for humans and quite a bit to degrade it. I am by no means an avid environmentalist, yet anyone can recognize all the damage caused by freon and the tremendous strain that condensors place on the power grid.

    What amazes me most is how Americans have begun to view air conditioning as a "necessity". Are we insane? The necessities in life are food, oxygen, and heat in climates with extreme cold. Nevertheless, the petroleum supplies are depleted at an increasing rate so that people can be more comfortable as they sit in traffic with the A/C on full blast.

    Yes, it's a nice invention. Hospitals can benefit tremendously from it. But it's nowhere near a necessity and if humans would tolerate a little discomfort, the Earth might be in much better shape.
    • Would I be wrong in assuming you don't live in a city which gets very hot in summer? People die in extreme heat.

      If you get cold, you put on more clothes and cover yourself in a blanket. If you get hot, you either find shade, cover yourself in water and sit in front of a fan, live underground or thank god you have an A/C.

      • Re:Thanks? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by broohaha ( 5295 )
        People die in extreme heat because their homes are not well ventilated. Not necessarily because of lack of air conditioning.

        Here in Chicago, it was mostly elderly people living alone who left their windows closed that one summer in 94 when 400 people died from a heat wave.

        But when I go visit my relatives in rural Philippines, I see people toughing it out in just-as-humid heat. Even The difference is their homes are better ventilated and they make do with electric fans and a shade (or a swim in the sea).

        The guy has a point. It's not a necessity. There is an alternative to air conditioning. Whereas there isn't an alternative to food, oxygen, and heat in extreme cold climates.

    • Re:Thanks? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by guran ( 98325 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @04:16AM (#3915237)
      Unpopular, a bit oversimplyfying, but nonetheless interesting.

      Compare housing in america to housing in, say italy or greece. (or mexico for that matter.)
      My feeling is that the widespread use of AC has made architects forget how you build a house for a hot climate. You don't have large south-facing windows. You have wooden or even stone floors and not a carpet. (Carpets are germ infested discusting things anyway) You have proper insulation and ventilation. You make sure that you get some freaking shade.

      Or,... you just put in some AC, and hope that power will never be a problem.

      • My feeling is that the widespread use of AC has made architects forget how you build a house for a hot climate.

        Absolutely. I recently brought an old (1860's) flat in Spain, and those architects sure did know how to make a nice space to live in. High ceilings, light, easy to clean, good distribution and cool without air-conditioning. Having lived only in modern flats before, I could never go back.

        Carpets are germ infested discusting things anyway

        Absolutely! I didn't realise how horrible carpets where until I lived in a place with tile floors. The combination of carpets, strip lighting and air-conditioning - what an unhealthy environment to live in.
      • Actually, you're forgetting that many houses built since the 1980's have R-38 level insulation all the way around the house and thermopane windows to minimize the effects of outside temperatures.

        As a result, this puts a lot less strain on air conditioners since they don't have to be run so often.

        Also, careful placement of circulating fans around the house really helps things, too. :-)
    • In the "good old days", the people who could afford it left the city for the summer, the poor and working class had to suffer through the heat. Summer also brought increases in diseases like malaria and yellow fever. Why do you think the U.S. Congress has a summer recess? Washington, D.C. used to be considered a malaria-ridden swamp.
    • Dude, when its a 110 degrees outside, ain't no amount of "ventilation" going to make me feel comfortable. And isn't the whole point of technological advancement to make humans more comfortable, and life more enjoyable?

      • And isn't the whole point of technological advancement to make humans more comfortable, and life more enjoyable?

        Good question. The answer may be yes, but not if by "make humans more comfortable" you really mean "make me more comfortable right now." How does the technology that makes you cooler affect everyone else on the planet? How 'bout future residents? Do non-human residents not matter at all?

        The long-term indirect consequences of AC are huge. To pick just two things, think how population distribution has changed due to AC and they resulting change in energy use and land use. And consider the ability to move perishable goods around the world and what happens when native agriculture for local consumption is replaced with mono-cultured goodies to ship the rich countries.

        I'm not saying these things are good or bad, but if we're considering what is the proper end of technological advancement, I really don't give a damn if you or I feel a little uncomfortable when the temperature gets a bit high.

    • >It's done very little to improve the quality of life for humans

      A flat out lie. If you don't feel more comfortable in an air conditioned building, you have some kind of temperature regulation problem, or a problem with dealing with humidity. See a doctor immediately.

      >and quite a bit to degrade it.

      I'm not even going to mention the huge conspiracy theory that is Freon, but I will ask why you think it degrades life? What, other than Freon, which modern air conditioners no longer use, about air conditioning is inherently bad? That it uses power? Well, BFD! Build a nuclear power plant and all the problems are solved.

      >I am by no means an avid environmentalist

      In that case, you should have no problem with nuclear power plants -- otherwise you are an environmentalist nutcase and just haven't come out of the closet yet.

      >But it's nowhere near a necessity and if humans would tolerate a little discomfort, the Earth might be in much better shape.

      Exactly how is getting rid of all air conditioning today going to benefit the earth? Considering how long an air conditioner lasts, I doubt its going to do much to landfills. Most parts of an air conditioner are recyclable anyways.

      Two, why be in discomfort when it causes little to no environmental harm? You just haven't backed up your theory that well...

      >Nevertheless, the petroleum supplies are depleted at an increasing rate so that people can be more comfortable as they sit in traffic with the A/C on full blast.

      The majority of time the majority of people sit in air conditioning (by majority I mean 90% or more) is in an air conditioned building. If your local power comes from coal or gas, I feel for you. Not just your environment, but you must be writing some fat checks to the local power authorities!

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Is this anyway related to... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MoThugz ( 560556 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @03:46AM (#3915164) Homepage
    this poll [slashdot.org] that's currently running on /.? BTW, it seems that most /.ers don't have the luxury of being cooled by ACs (according to the poll).
    • BTW, it seems that most /.ers don't have the luxury of being cooled by ACs
      but some /.ers enjoy the luxury of being flamed by ACs
      • it seems that most /.ers don't have the luxury of being cooled by ACs (according to the poll).

      Slashmaths: 3 + 10 + 17 + 13 + 6 + 7 < 36

      God help us all.

    • Boy can't add eh? Look and add all of the temp ranges and you shall see 6,291 have air conditioning and keep in in some crazy ranges. I don't like my house like an ice box, so I have to say that I am in the 73-76 range. I applaud those who have there's greater then 80, but BOY I bet they have shweaty balls and boobs (geek girls too ya know!).

  • Personally, I am looking forward to more widespread use of geothermal heat exchange systems (see this document [doe.gov] and a few links at the bottom of that page for more info) to gain efficiency and save energy (and money). As every VW Bug owner knows, air is okay as a heat exchange medium, but it is not the best. Using the ground to move the energy around makes a whole lot of sense, and can be tacked on to an existing A/C setup (with a whole lot of digging, of course).

    Living in Phoenix as I do, I can definitely appeciate this invention, and let's not forget Carnot.

  • Refrigerator? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by hofer ( 84209 )
    I thought the air conditioners used the same principle as refrigerators. And that was first built [ideafinder.com] a bit earlier (19th Century in Pennsylvania and Australia, ether machines) and the first practical system was built by Ferdinand Carre (France). Isn't air conditioning just an application of an earlier invention to a "new" area? You know, instead of cooling dead meat, it cools the living? :-)
    • Isn't air conditioning just an application of an earlier invention to a "new" area?

      Yes. Furthermore, according to the article, "Carrier borrowed on the heater principle, but instead of sending air through hot coils, he sent it through coils chilled with cold water." This sounds like he didn't even use a compression - expansion heat pump/refrigeration principle, but just piped in cool water from the lake.

      Talk about obvious! If you count that as "air conditioning", you ought to credit it to the unkown architect that first designed a building that kept itself cool. Except that was just an artificial cave...
  • "I can think of no sin greater than central air"
    Dogma
  • What's the largest number of Athlons you have in a room without air conditioning?
    • I have none of those space-heater CPUs!
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • My room is hotter than the surface of the sun
    • I use Cowboyneal's Athlon

  • Simply not true (Score:3, Informative)

    by Nick Barnes ( 11927 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @05:35AM (#3915373)
    Air conditioning is much more than a hundred years old. Modern air conditioners are just gas liquifying refrigeration systems, patented in 1876 by Carl von Linden and applied to air conditioning shortly thereafter. Air conditioning without gas liquification goes back many centuries: use natural convective air flow through a building (the best old examples are dwellings: houses, palaces, etc) to draw cool air into a living area. Design so that you have a source of cool air, possibly involving running water.
    • Yup. My parents' flower/garden shop back home in Williamsville (suburb of Buffalo) has this to cool the main office area. Cool water is pumped from an underground well through hoses that run above and below the office area. The water heats up, drawing heat from the air. The water is then pumped into a holding well before it is passed along to the watering system. Plants are much less picky than humans about the temperature of the water they receive. At least, I've never heard them complain. ;-)

  • This is not something to be happy about (Score:3, Interesting)

    by YeeHaW_Jelte ( 451855 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @05:47AM (#3915384) Homepage
    Well, here for some karma-burning on this all-american site: americans and their airco's suck!
    As has been noted in articles a few weeks ago on the greenhouse effect and enviromentalism, americans use about twice the amount of energy per head of the population as Europeans do, as a manifold of other world-inhabitants. Apart from your gas guzzling auto obsession I wouldn't be surprised to find that air-conditioning is the next most energy-intensive hobby you guys have. I know you all live in a very different climate, have a different stance to nature ( partly because we Europeans already fucked up everything in Europe that conceivably can be called nature centuries ago ) but get real.
    I've been to the states many times, have even lived there, and each time the temperature rises beyond 25 degrees celsius (that's 75~80 fahrenheit) I get a cold from walking in the heat, then coming into 18 degree offices and stores, then walking in the heat again, etc. It's just rediculous the way you guys refuse to adapt to your enviroment -- if you take a couple of days to let your body adjust, you'll be able to function perfectly at 30 degrees celsius, I know I can.
    So, no, I'm not particularly happy about Mr. Carrier, god bless his soul, invented this machine 100 years ago, and I don't think you should be any more happier than me.
    • I grew up on a farm in northern Michigan, back when only the very rich would buy air conditioning for the 6 weeks of hot weather we get a year. Let me assure you, my body never adapted to physical labor at about 30C (86F), with high humidity.

      OTOH, when I was in the service near Clovis, New Mexico with low humidity, 40C (104F) was no particular problem as long as you had wind and shade. But the sun on the Llano Estacado is a real killer...
  • Air conditioning has helped to destroy the beauty of summertime. As a boy growing up in the pre-airconditioned South, you could walk the streets at twilight amidst a restful summer quiet. It was a quiet that is hard to describe. Not silence, but the peacefulness of a community winding down at day's end. Kids might be playing in the yards or loafing on a porch. You might hear the quiet sound of a radio through an open kitchen window. You'd see someone washing dishes, bathed in the pale yellow glow of her kitchen light.

    Outdoors the sky would be turning darker as a shadowy purple became the predominant tint to the surroundings. The most prevalent sound was the synchronoized chatter of cicadas (locusts) with their bizarre rhythm of cyclic rattling. Oh, and of course their were the silent fireworks of the fireflies.

    Now when you walk the street at dusk, you see no one, not even someone washing dishes, thanks to the ubiquitous dishwasher. Kids are nowhere to be seen. The steady drone of each and every house's air conditioning compressor fills the air, drowning out even the cicadas. You might as well be walking through a 24 hour per day widget factory. It is an industrial noise which blocks out all sounds of nature.

    Sky watchers complain of light pollution; I would like to add to their complaint, the noise pollution of air conditioners which have helped to destroy the summer night.

  • ... that air conditioning was invented in Buffalo?"

    The "Armpit of America"? Have you ever smelled that city?

    I rest my case... ;-)

  • American air conditioner craze (Score:3, Interesting)

    by magi ( 91730 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @06:38AM (#3915456) Homepage Journal
    Americans seem to be rather crazy about the air conditioners. Not that they are nice in a hot day, but why the hell do they have to turn their houses into freezers with them?

    I mean, last time I was in Florida, I was shivering all the time I was indoors. Being indoors with shorts and a T-shirt was very unconfortable. In my hotel, the entire room was filled with a freezing gale from an enormous air conditioner. I tried to find some controls or a switch to turn it off, but couldn't. Luckily the beds had enough blankets to sleep in Siberian winter, so I didn't have to sleep outside.

    After a few days, I got a bad cold, and had to end my conference&vacation trip early. I wasn't in a condition to be able to go to the Space Center, Epcot, or other sights in Orlando. Some other Finnish people I know tell that they get a cold every time they visit US.

    What's the problem with you? Is it that the businessmen and others have to be able to wear a suit in hotels all the time, or what?
    • I can second that. I was on a conference in Hawaii in Januari. It was a nice 30 degrees celsius outside. The conference hotel basically had it's doors and windows wide open (so people could walk in and out) and still managed to chill the rooms to a shivering 18 degrees celsius. Everybody was dressed for the nice 30 degrees (shorts & shirts) but I saw a lot of people putting on sweaters inside!!
    • Cold temperatures don't make you sick. More than likely you either were having an allergic reaction to the dust/pollen/spores in the rooms or outside (something that will manifest itself as a head cold usually)

      The biggest problem I have with AC is that in order to make homes "more energy efficient" you have to make them as airtight as possible, which means that you get no exchange of outside (fresh) air. We're in the process of putting in a fresh air exchanger (actually, its a full heat exchanger, too, to improve on the efficiency) for our office now, because the air quality indoors royally sucks.
      • Cold temperatures don't make you sick.

        Cold itself may not make you sick, but it can make you more susceptible, and drastic changes in environment in short periods of time (hot + humid -> cold + dry) and back and forth a few times can really mess you up quick.

    • Try it in the winter in a northern state - many of my idjit countrymen seem to set their heater to 78F and their air conditioners to 72. Good thing most central air systems have a lockout that prevents the two from running simultaneously...

      And it is bad for your health. People step outdoors on a moderate winter day and they're badly chilled almost immediately. Their body hasn't adapted to winter. Also, it's too hot indoors to wear warm clothes - so for one thing, they might put a two inch thick down jacket over their chest, but they are leaking heat through thin trousers. Keep the heat at 65 to 68, and (1) you can be comfortable indoors while dressed appropriately for the season, and (2) you'll adapt to cooler temperatures.
    • Disclaimer: I live in Florida

      It's in the hotel's best interest to have you use as little air conditioning as possible. I have stayed lots of places around here, and NEVER found one that doesn't allow you to turn off the AC. Not to mention that if you open the windows/doors in most of them, a switch will turn off the AC. This is law (or at least some sort of regulation) in some counties in Florida.

      So, the "I couldn't turn off the AC in my room" argument sounds a little bogus.

      The reason that large conference rooms in hotels during conferences are often too cold has more to dealing with large numbers of people than a desire to have a room be too cold.

      If you've ever set up at one of these shows you will know that it's freezing when there only a few people in the stadium-sized room, but still can get pretty hot when there are thousands in there. You must pre-cool the room for the max crowd well beforehand, due to the size of the room.

      It's a limitation of the technology (and thermodynamics to some extent) that no number of windows being open or insulation will cure. Sorry...

      Again, it's to the economic advantage of the bill-payers of the gigantic room, to keep it as warm as possible. They aren't trying to freeze you out.

      Finally, who would be more used to the extremely warm temperatures here in the summer, residents or northern tourists? It's you lot that demand the "ideal" temperatures inside every building that relate to northern European climes. Don't piss on us for giving you what you want, unfortunately it's our job as a tourist mecca.

      And coming from someplace like Finland (apparently) to the tropics and then blaming the AC being too cold (compared to Finland?) as the cause of your illness, shows a fair ignorance of Biology and international travel.

      Speaking as someone who apparently has a brain the size of a walnut, I'm disappointed that you "large brained" foreigners couldn't whine better than that. You do it with olympic caliber when you come over here, that's for sure.

      Ok Finland, we'll turn off the AC in the summer, you turn off the heat in winter!

      (cultural bigots come from all over, not just the USA)
  • Here [washingtonpost.com]. And Washington DC is a town that really needs AC.
  • Ironically enough, the Philadelphia Inquirer had an article yesterday pointing out how AC is actually making cities up to 10 degrees hotter versus rural areas.
    In summer, all that extra heat - as much as 25 times more than in suburbs - tends to get trapped close to the ground by high-pressure systems. The result can be a vicious cycle.

    "It's hotter, so we use air-conditioning, which makes it hotter, so we use more air-conditioning," said J. Scott Greene, director of the environmental and verification analysis center at the University of Oklahoma.
    A great read for anyone who's interested...

    • For some reason my links got pruned out of the above...

      Here's the link to the article: http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/3686038.htm
    • ABCNews.com carried a story [go.com] on so called "Green roof" buildings. Putting plants, soil, and other natural things on top of buildings made the buildings cooler, and consequently, the area around the buildings cooler as well. Sounds like a pretty neat solution to me.

      Of course, dropping things off the roof can be fun too, but won't cool the building off. Who knew that a frozen banana hitting pavement would splatter into tiny bits. *sigh* if only we had access to liquid nitrogen.
  • ... that Buffalo invented air conditioning? We're EXPERTS on cold. :)

    Matt

  • John Gorrie and Apalachicola- the REAL inventor (Score:3, Informative)

    by pkeck ( 218790 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @08:19AM (#3915668)
    I remember from visiting Apalachicola, Florida, that they have a sign proclaiming to be the birthplace of air conditioning. Google it and see. Here's a decent page: http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/florida/lessons/gorrie/g orrie.htm [usf.edu] .

    He had rooms cooled by mechanical refrigeration 50 years before the usurpers in Buffalo! Let the revisionist history be cast down!
  • The air conditioner completely changed the south every bit as much as the cotton gin did 100 years prior.

    Before AC the only people who could tolerate southern weather were those unfortunate enough to have been born there. It's only after AC that you see the large migrations from the north that enabled large cities such as Atlanta to develop. Only after AC does the south start to economically resemble the rest of the country.

    In turn, AC also helped destroy the south as a region. That migration of money and people from other places fueled the suburbanization of the region, all but wiping out its regional identity in a sea of highways and Burger Kings.

    Just reflecting on this as I sit in a 65 degree room in the middle of a 95 degree summer.
    • If it weren't for air conditioning, you can forget about living in the US Southwest.

      Can you imagine large scale cities in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and the interior of California without air conditioning? I didn't think so. Especially in the summer these parts of the US can zoom well over 40 degrees C. easily.
      • I live in Minnesota now, but grew up in various parts of Arizona, and as long as you're not in Phoenix, you can get by just fine with swamp coolers [jbmailroom.com], which I like a lot better, 'cos it keeps some moisture in the air. That doesn't work in Phoenix, which is way more humid than you'd think, so there you *need* airconditioning.
        And so, by following a regimen that involves never being outside in the summer for more than a couple of minutes, driving from your airconditioned house with its irrigated lawn, to your airconditioned office park over by the golfcourse, or to the restaurant in the mall, you can move straight to Phoenix from Kansas and never realize you're in the desert at all. Whether that's a good or bad thing I'll leave up to someone less cranky than I feel at the moment.
      • I've been to the southwest, it isn't so bad.

        I grew up in Louisiana, it's nightmareish.

        Dry heat isn't too much of a problem as long as you keep drinking water. When the humidity approaches saturation, you can't sweat, and your body creates an insulating film of perspiration. It's much easier to have a heat related health crises in 90 degree weather in the swamp than in 105 degree weather in the desert.

  • Wrong (Score:2)

    by Zapdos ( 70654 )
    The fist use of conditioned air was by the army corps. of engineers for the short bed stay of ABRAHAM LINCOLN after receiving his fatal shot. They used blocks of ice in a trough that drained down through strips of cloth, into a drain trough. A fan was used to force air through the cold cloth strips.

  • A little tidbit about keeping cool in summer: before the widespread use of air conditioners, in many parts of the Mojave Desert in California they built special buildings nicknamed submarines to keep people cool.

    This is how author John R. Signor described the original submarine building design in his book Beaumont Hill (Copyright 1990 Golden West Books, ISBN 0-87095-105-X):

    This unusual contraption was roughly man-sized. It had a hood of galvanized steel that rolled back over a bed, similar to a rolltop desk. It contained a built-in trough that held 20 gallons of water with a blanket covering the hood. A sleeper would get inside and pull the hood down over the bed. Then he opened a valve that allowed water to drop from perforated pipes, which would saturate the blanket. The evaporation cooled the steel hood and the inside of the chamber. The outside temperature might register 130 degrees, but inside [Bob] Richardson's bed, the air was a comfortable 70 degrees.

    Developed by Southern Pacific railroad engineer Bob Richardson 1906, submarines became an extremely popular way to keep cool in the summer, especially in the Mojave Desert. Richardson in 1922 developed a larger version that could hold larger beds and a even a small desk or nightstand.

    Submarines, however, had one big downside: they didn't work well in high humidity environments. That mean these structures weren't so useful during the later summer when rains coming from the Pacific Ocean southwest of the Mojave Desert were common (usually the remanants of hurricanes that spawn off the Pacific coast of Mexico).

    The development of modern air conditioning essentially ended the age of submarines, mostly because air conditioners continued to cool even in higher humidity conditions of later summer desert monsoon rains that occurred in the Mojave Desert.
  • So when do we get the anniversery story on the toaster? The refrigerator? The vacuume cleaner? Oh, I know! Indoor plumbing! That's gotta be on par with air conditioning, right?

    ~Sigh~ Imagine a beowolf cluster of those. 9_9
  • Actually, the inventor of Air-Conditioning was a doctor in Florida back in 1830's, who wanted to prevent his patients form breathing of swamp gas, which he thought was the cause of malaria. Dr. John Gorrie [sun-herald.com] , "a doctor at the U.S. Marine Hospital in Apalachicola in the 1830s who was looking for a way to lower the fevers of malaria patients, is credited as the inventor of air conditioning -- and his legacy has changed life in Florida and just about everywhere else in America. (I remembered this from watching the ole BBC show, "Connections".) Gorrie started experimenting with cooling air in the 1830s, when he hung buckets of ice from the ceiling and forced air over them, according to Raymond Arsenault, a history professor at the University of South Florida who has studied air conditioning's impact on the South. Later he used a steam-driven compressor to cool air, which led to the first patent for an ice-making machine in 1851." Cool, huh?

    "I used to have a problem with multiple personalities, but now we're fine."
  • It was built for the construction of Hoover dam. The dam slowly went up in 8 foot sections to allow time for each section to cure and cool before putting more concrete on top of it. It was calculated that if the dam had been poured at once in one big pour (yeah, impossible but they calculated it), it would have taken 125 years to cure. Set aside the fact that the concrete would have been extremely fragile... Ah the joys of the Discover Channel. Gotta love it.

  • A/C in cars (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Peyna ( 14792 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @10:15AM (#3916299) Homepage
    While working at a General Motors truck plant last summer I noticed that nearly every truck we built had an air conditioner and a radio except for the ones we sent to Mexico. You would think somewhere as hot as mexico they would want A/C. At first I thought this was because nobody down there could afford it, but then I realized it's because they are more adapted to living in the heat than we are. IIRC most buildings in Mexico don't have A/C, but nobody really cares either.

    Maybe all of us in the states like our A/C so much because most of us came from parts of Europe where it is a bit cooler most of the year than it is here.
  • and I survived without AC for 9 years (so did my wife - gosh I love her.) For those not from Houston or ever been to hell, temps range only in the upper 90s, but with a 90% humidity! All year long we live and breath water. Before the 1950s, Houston had a thriving swim club culture. Now? It is a fringe sport at best (I am a swimmer.)

    In the past when I didn't have AC, my pc died regularly due to over heating and I didn't have many people over (there is a limit to how little clothing you can wear!)

    Now that I live in AC, I've gained 35 pounds (155 lbs.) Friends visit my house. I can't tolerate sever heat any more. I can still tolerate temps higher than my friends (I like it in the 80s,) but I can't tolerate temps in the 90s.

  • Not 100 Years, more like 150 years. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by azephrahel ( 193559 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @01:04PM (#3917576)
    Air conditioning was invented by an american, but not in Buffalo of all places (you don't really NEED it there)

    It was invented by Dr. John Gorrie in about 1850. You see he had many malaira patients. At the time, it was thought that malaria was caused by bad air. mal-aria is litteraly translated to bad air. John invented steam engine powered refigeration units to cool the ward he kept his patients in, thinking that it would aid in curing malaria.
    Look here for a snippet of "connetions by James Burke" Connections the video programme is where I learned about this when I was a kid.
    http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:fH0DRdI 0DUIC: www.sciam.com/0797issue/0797connections.html+docto r+ice+air+conditioning+malaria+america&hl=en&ie=UT F-8
    (sorry its in the cache, the origonal article has gone missing)

    or here for short pdf's about Dr John Gorrie who actually invented air conditioning.
    http://www.ashrae.org/ABOUT/gladsto ne.pdf
    Thank google here is the pdf as html
    http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:YXwB1EF WEIsC: www.ashrae.org/ABOUT/gladstone.pdf+John+Gorrie+doc tor&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

    <rant>And now lets all rally against people claiming "invention" for things they didn't do, or things that are discovers of mathematical and natural phenomenon.</rant>

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