The History of Air Conditioning
The concept of cooling and air conditioning began as early as the 1700s when Scottish chemist William Cullen conducted experiments in which he created an artificial refrigeration device in Edinburgh. A pump was used which created a partial vacuum over a container of diethyl ether. The diethyl ether was then boiled which absorbed heat from the surroundings. This created what we call ice. For some reason this idea did not pick up commercially for many more years to come. Ben Franklin is known mostly for discovering electricity but he was also partially responsible for certain cooling concepts. Franklin discovered through experience that on a hot day having a wet shirt on his body would cool his temperature if a breeze came through. This concept is the main foundation of the air conditioning concept that we know of today. Franklin and a friend John Hadley conducted some experiments in 1758. However, nothing much came of such experiments. In 1824 A British scientist by the name of Michael Faraday that compressing and liquefying a certain gas could chill the air when the liquid ammonia was allowed to evaporate. This idea remained mostly theoretical but did contribute somewhat to the whole concept of air conditioning. Ten years later, in 1834 Jacob Perkins obtained a patent for a vapor compression refrigeration system. He was able to build a prototype system that functioned very well. However, the system never became commercially known and Perkins' name did not become a household name. In 1842 Dr. John Gorrie also attempted to build a modest air conditioning unit. Gorrie was a physician in Florida who primarily took care of patients who were suffering from Malaria and Yellow Fever. Both Malaria and Yellow Fever were disorders that were associated with very high temperatures. Dr. Gorrie theorized that bad air was the cause of these illnesses. Also, he believed that he could somehow remove the bad air if he was able to chill the room. Dr. Gorrie attempted to cool the patients and chill out the bad air by creating an ice making machine that blew air over a bucket of ice. John Gorrie believed he had come up something amazing and quit his medical practice so that he could further develop his ice machine. He tried to raise money to have his ice machine developed and mass produced. He ended up dying in 1955 and the concept of air conditioning lay dormant for years. Later on in the year 1881 naval engineers constructed a box shaped structure with clothes wet with melted ice and a fan that could blow air overhead. This contraption was slightly more advanced than that of John Gorrie as it could cool the temperate of a room up to twenty degrees Fahrenheit. The negative aspect of this particular contraption was that it required more than 250,000 pounds of ice to operate for a period of just one month. The closest device to the modern air conditioner was created by a man named Willis Carrier. The system used a centrifugal compressor and was a large scale electrical unit. This was the first true mechanical air conditioning system. It was originally named the "apparatus for treating air" and was manufactured in New York. Carrier's invention quickly gained popularity all over the world. It was used in textile mills, printing plants, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. It was even used in the home of some very wealthy people. The first units were very flawed though in that they were very large, extremely expensive, and used ammonia as the coolant which is very toxic for people to breathe in. Carrier created a second batch of units in which he replaced the ammonia with a coolant known as dielene that is not harmful to people. He also added a central compressor to the unit which decreased its size. This second batch of air conditioners became a huge success. Movie theaters, office buildings, department stores, and railroad cars started installing them. Sales of these air conditioning units jumped rapidly to 1,045,000 by the year 1953. Today almost every home is filled with at least one air conditioning unit for the hot summertime months. All automobiles are also sold with built in air
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