Slashdot Mirror
100th Anniversary of Air Conditioning
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?"
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
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
Thank you Mr. Willis Haviland Carrier!!
Cool!
The Moo went "Cow!"
actually owned an air conditioner it might seem to be a big deal to me! I curse thee air conditioner and all the people who have one, because i remain hot!
http://www.msnbc.com/news/773447.asp
why does slashdot have only old stories?
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.
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?
A few quotes and the standard journalist rambling. It might be appropriate on this day to find out/brush up on how they work.
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.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
I did it just to piss 1st post trolls like you off. I could give a $#!t.
Someone hates these cans.
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)
Is this a subliminal /. ad? I'm very confused.
Air conditioning and Code Red share the same birthday? this has gotta be a setup by those hackers who live in the desert, funded by the CIA to perpetuate their hidden alien agenda! Or.... it might be a coincidence.... I guess the mystery will live on forever until tuesday, about 8pm.
Insert something insightful here, or I'll insert something painful there.
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. . .
Posting anonymously to bypass the negative karma posting filter.
What a co-inki-dink!
Just today.....
Oh good...more people disgusted about what Im doing. Isnt that what brought about the whole mess your talking about?
Touche...
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.
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.
"Software is like sex. It's better when it's free." -Linus Torvalds
I've been tempted to explore the old abandoned plant, in the style of infiltration.org... but I have no real idea of what the security there is. When I was a kid in Buffalo, I used to hang around abandoned buildings, partly out of necessity. The old DL&W Terminal was a really cool place...
This space available.
this poll 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).
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
I live in amherst which is the suburb right out side of buffalo and it is humid here, 70 F is like hell on earth in buffalo. I lived in Las Vegas for 10 years and I would rather spend all day 121 F (dry heat) in vegas then to spend 1 hour in 70F (high Humidity) in buffalo.
I have my AC on right now because if I didnt I would be stuck to my leather chair!!
Amherst is where the rich people live and Buffalo is where the poor people live. but they are right next to each other.
keanmarine.com
I was fairly sure the original carrier a/c implemented in the publisher was filled with ammonia, not water.
Personally, I am looking forward to more widespread use of geothermal heat exchange systems (see this document 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.
I think the concept of regrigeration may be older than 100 years, but whatever...
living in the tropics, where walking to the end of the street can cause copious perspiration - i say thanks Mr. Carrier =)
I thought the air conditioners used the same principle as refrigerators. And that was first built 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? :-)
Score:1, Unread
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...
"I can think of no sin greater than central air"
Dogma
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
Yeah, right. The Roman Emperors had air conditioning 1000 years ago. The coolth was provided by ice brought down to Rome from the mountains by slaves.
You are correct. Various types of air cooling and conditioning have been in use for thousands of years. Here is a brief list of some of the types of air conditioning methods used in the history of Texas for the last few hundred years. It is worth noting that many large buildings still use the ice-chiller system to cool air, and it's being used in new construction, as well. "Refrigerated air" is simply not terribly efficient in large spaces.
Get off my launchpad!
And then bean count so we cannot get working air conditioning and it is 32 degrees at my desk when it is a pleasant 24 degrees outside!
I do shower and change clothes once a day (twice on hot days) but without air-con or a relaxed dress code it's a losing battle.
Why have you chosen to notice only the bad things in life? The story is about a man who 100 years ago did something that made the WORLD a better place. You chose to highlight the squakings of a bunch of extremists who are ruining the WORLD for everyone else. I don't think the people eating 'Shreddies' and playing Evercrack have half the problems you do. My suggestion is that instead of bashing people for living seemingly normal lives, you should focus your energies on doing something productive. Bitching about it on Slashdot doesn't do squat for the starving children in China.
Someone hates these cans.
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.
Funny how the AC was invented in a place which has a few records for the most snowfall in a 72 hour period. Sometimes it piles up above 7 or 8 feet. Need AC? just open up a window and let the snow fall in.
my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
... that air conditioning was invented in Buffalo?"
;-)
The "Armpit of America"? Have you ever smelled that city?
I rest my case...
Not Anonymous Coward, Air Conditioning.
It truly is a sign of man's triumph over nature.
Viva Air Conditioning! Hrive Entuluva!
In ancient Egypt they used to used what amounted to a wet blanket strung over a window. Had the same effect.
NO CARRIER
Actually, the summers here are usually beautiful; :-)
Climate-wise, Western New York is a great place
to live, and has just as much need of A/C in the
summer as most other places. Oh, and contrary
to what a poster below states, it doesn't smell
bad here, either.
-- Dave
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?
Back at the begining of the 20th Century, Buffalo was one of the 10 largest cities in the US. Bad political/economical decisions killed the city. It's the only city that has 12 major hubs in a 500mile radius. The irony is buffalo has really not grown in size in the last 102 years (we're excluding surrounding towns/suburbs).
:-)
The weird thing is that Buffalo has tonnes of inventions attributed to it. Visiting Buffalo, you tend to wonder what inspired those inventions. Ok, the humid heat of summer in Buffalo could have inspred the air conditioner. Why didn't someone invent the lake freezer? It would freeze the lake's so that Buffalo wouldn't be buried in 7' of lake effect snow in a matter of 5 days
(Ok, I am applying for a patent on that, don't any of you dare try to steal my invention)
I am Lord Snowbeam. Heed my call!
Sorry, you didn't pass your thermodynamics test...
In order to move heat from a colder temperature to a higher one (which doesn't happen spontaneously due to the second law of thermodynamics) we need work. If you say it's all equal, I guess you never seen a fridge? It is one of the biggest electricity users in a normal house.
Electricity in heat pumps (the technical term for fridges and such) drives a motor that drives a compressor. The compressor moves around a special substance that evaporates (endothermic process) in the cooling section and condeses (exothermic process) in the heat outlet (for example those grilles blowing out hot air near buildings).
The amount of electricity (or actually work) needed to drive the compressor is substantial, one third to half of the heat energy being pumped away.
Here. And Washington DC is a town that really needs AC.
Best Slashdot Co
Audio is available here:
Talk of the Nation (02.07.11)
Weekend Edition (02.07.14)
The Talk of the Nation show was pretty interesting and probably worth a listen if you have a few extra minutes.
(Luckily I allowed to link to npr.org w/o getting permission first now)
Kings of Europe in the 15th Century already used cooled air (using ice that was brough from the montains).
How else would you train all summer to spend football games shirtless during the winter? *g*
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...
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I can hack in the summer now...
I can hack in rooms with no windows...
I have no excuse to go outside because its "nice", its nice inside too!
The code red stays nice and cool!
Whats wrong with a little sweat anyway!
dude, if you'd listened to NPR you would have gotten your news about a week earlier.
You ARE the weakest link. Goodbye.
Yeah but they also shot McKinley
when they ban enctryption only criminals wi$21*J *#JF$%!@#$':
... that Buffalo invented air conditioning? We're EXPERTS on cold. :)
Matt
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...:)
Go to Maine or something. Down in the south it gets downright nasty in the summertime. The desert ain't bad, hot but not humid. The southeast, however....
NPR's Talk Of The Nation had a pretty stout show on this very topic recently. The show's blurb: Here's a quiz. What technological invention is credited with the summer blockbuster, the rise of Las Vegas and the demise of southern literature? The answer is the air conditioning. How staying cool changed American life ... Join guest host Doug Fabrizio for Talk of the Nation from NPR News.
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 .
He had rooms cooled by mechanical refrigeration 50 years before the usurpers in Buffalo! Let the revisionist history be cast down!
Sorry chaps ... but I had to! ... and I'm new to this game - is this a troll or a pixie or something?
"No sin, no vice, no heavenly rapture so exquisite as that of central air"
Man... after all of these insanely hot days, I am absolutely certain I would be dead right now if it wasn't for air conditioning.
:-P
I bow down to the God of Air Conditioning on this her/his 100th birthday... All praise.
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!).
Gorkman
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.
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.
So what exactly do you propose? That people in cities not use air conditioning?
The ironic thing is that environmentalists are typically the one who want to pack everyone into crowded cities. We're all supposed to live in apartments, and take trains or busses to work. Living in a nice suburban house, where it might at least be possible to survive without air conditioning, is just eeeevviiil ...
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.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
What's the problem with you?
Maybe I'm too busy being happy and successful to take every opportunity to bash another country?
Sure the houses are nice and cool in the summer.
;)
But in their mild winters the house FREEZES!
With few fireplaces, I froze my cajules off.
No thank you I dont want a house in Europe unless it's during the summer on a waterfront with some hot euro babe at my side, hehehe
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'm just intereested why you think that energy crisis was fake. I love a good conspiracy theory. I don't really need any other proof besides my electric bill to show that if I turn up my thermostat during the day, I save money. Its much easier to cool my home in the evening when the sun isn't baking my house.
Fix Your Own TV - RiddledTV.com Avoid the Landfill
Why do we assume that humans invented air conditioning? Both termites and bees use air conditioning. Bees will stand at the entrance to a hive and fan cool air in manually, termites build their mounds to make use of solar energy.
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 ...
It was nice to see the article taking about AC but remember that other cooling units ( for freezing ) were along for over 30 years prior to this and were using ammonium to create ice.
Anyone who sweltered through last week's heat wave... or any other July/August in the region.
I bet all those revolutionaries would settle down if they had _air conditioning_
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
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.
Get a free ipod.
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.
Buffalo does not have 15 feet of snow on the ground year-round.
Today Isolated T-Storms 80
Sat Partly Cloudy 82
Sun Partly Cloudy 87
Mon Scattered T-Storms 87
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
You need a FREE iPod Nano
It's important to remember what a huge change like this has had on the demographics in the US and other countries that experience high degrees (pun intented) of heat during parts or all of the year.
Without AC, states like Florida and Utah, New Mexico, and California would never have been able to develope the way they did.
I put the invention of hte AC up there with the automobile, the radio, and the cure for malaria.
Considering that he had been editor of a Buffalo Newspaper for a couple of years, I find a little less irony in AC being invented in Buffalo.
-- There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I eat less on hot summer days... might drink more, but I tend to b a lot less hungry.
Has AC contributed to why we are less active? Less melting away?
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 , "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.
actually not invented in buffalo. it was invented in brooklyn....
glitch
linkfilter.net
Holy crow. I never would have thought that my home city would appear on Slashdot for any reason. Woot!
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, 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.
-- 'intellectual property' is oxymoronic
WoW! 2 things out of Buffalo, Air Conditioning and chicken wings.
If they cause the temperature to increase, just turn on th AC to cool things down.
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.
What?
If you have air conditioning on a hot day, thank Von Linde and the beer-drinking habits of Germans. Actually, I suppose credit for the concept of the air conditioner rightly goes to John Goerie from Florida who developed it (and built a primitive but working model) to "cure" patients suffering from malaria, though it may have been developed elsewhere later...
Internet Explorer was unable to link to the Web page you requested. The page might use standard HTML or CSS.
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.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
I've lived just outside Buffalo my entire life, and I can tell you that Buffalo's weather is like a person with multiple personality disorder. Monday you're sledding, Wednesday you're in shorts, indoors, with the AC on, praying because you fear Judgement Day has arrived. But on the same token, most people around here regularly wear shorts in the Winter, HAVE multiple personality disorder, and often times think it's Judgement Day.
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!
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
The air conditioner was actually invented by three Jewish gentlemen. Their names are on the front of every air conditioner manufactured.
Norm, Hi, and Max.
It certainly seems inefficient to retrofit it into existing homes and homesites -- digging, plumbing, etc etc.
But what about *new* construction of subdivisions? This crossed my mind the last time I went to suburbia -- the development I was in had for every group of houses a pond/wetland pretty much in the center around them. What if you made this water feature a part of the geothermal cooling process when you built everything?
The return water from the houses could be pumped into a fountain (gaining evaporative cooling) and the supply water could be taken from the cooler water at the bottom; presumably a non-trivial amount of cooling would be done on the buried portions running to/from the houses.
This would in effect be not much different from the huge evaporative cooling towers that supply chilled water to the downtown buildings around me. It would add a "pretty" water feature to the homes around it and it wouldn't be astronomical to build since there'd already be tons of digging going on.
The downside would be that it wouldn't do anything for heat in the winter and the water would presumably require some serious filtration to keep the water systems functioning. I'm not terribly clear on the amount of water it would take to keep such a system for 10, 2500 sq ft houses cool in 90+ degree weather. It'd be a drag if the pond was too small and the water got too warm; perhaps burying a large loop beneath the pond for the supply side would add some cooling to it.
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.
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.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
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)
but there is a castle in mexico that is over 1000 years old on a mountain by the sea. The designers built tunnels in the mountain so that the coastal winds would be pushed through the mountain into the castle. The cold rock in the mountain cools the air before it is propelled into the castle. It was over 100 outside, and a cool 78 (according to my watch thermistor) inside. Quite the marvel.
-EvilMonkeyNinja
Mild Mannered Host by Day
Wild Hammered Programmer by Night
might not be caused by the change in temperature, but rather the horrible nastiness that's likely growing inside the AC unit. they changed the filters in our building last week...*shudder*
anyway, isn't it an old wives' tale that being too cold will make you sick? hell...we never had AC when i was a kid, and i only seemed to get colds during the summer - winter was wonderful.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
It may have been invented in Buffalo, but it was invented by a Texan. Air conditioning is the only thing that makes living in Houston or Dallas bearable in summer.
Basically, Cornell U uses Cayuga Lake as their heat exchanger. They run their campus cooling water down to the lake where it's heat is removed. It appears that this system doesn't require a refrigerant/compression/expansion cycle at the campus -- the cooling water is cold enough to do the job.
NPR recently did a story on Cool Comfort: America's Romance with Air-Conditioning , Marsha Ackerman's book telling about the invention and adoption of air conditioning in the United States. In the radio story, she talks about the first applications in factories wanting a stable environment in which to manufacture their goods. Rich people weren't interested - they didn't "sweat." Workers "sweat," gentlemen "perspire," and ladies "glow." The rich went to their summer homes in the mountains, anyway. The biggest challenge was automobile air conditioning - size and efficiency constraints postponed its introduction until about 40 years ago.
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
My parents day in and day out wonder why I don't turn on the A/C in my room. I tell them that if you don't try to freeze yourself indoors, then when you go outdoors the heat won't seem so unbearable. But they keep on asking why I do it, as if my explanation isn't good enough. So (on those rare occasions when family members are home together) while everyone is complaining about how hot it is, I'm lounging, because it doesn't bother me.
Granted, the 80-90F we're getting in Jersey probably isn't remotely as bad as what those guys are getting South & West of us, but hey.
[o]_O
It takes FOREVER to recover from the thermostat setback in the morning, but I have one of these Honeywell adaptive thermostats which starts the furnace up at 2 in the morning to make things warm by 7 AM when I get out of bed. It turns out that I burn more gas by effectively having less a setback if the furnace needs to start up that early, but what I use in gas I get back with interest in electric savings from only using the low-blower setting.
I wonder if heat pump people could benefit from a fancy thermostat that could start the heat pump early but not let it switch on the resistive coils?
The one thing I don't envy you heat pump people is those things need to blow a lot of luke-warm air. My low-blower gas furnace puts out 56,000 BTU (that's 4.5 tons in heat pump lingo) on 600 CFM of air -- hardly hear the thing. A heat pump with that output would be blowing about 1800 CFM -- darned thing probably sounds like a jet engine or an AMD processor cooling fan.
To get back on-topic for Mr. Carrier's invention, my AC season is really humid (dewpoints reach 70 degrees at times), and my main objective is keeping the humidity at or below 50 percent as recommended by my allergist. First off, it is important NOT to have the blower on continuous because you keep evaporating that 2 quarts of moisture that sticks the coils when the AC cycles off, and you get this blast of chilled, muggy air out the vents. Secondly, at a constant thermostat setting, the AC will run mainly during the day and very little at night when you want to fight the muggies.
I set my thermostat for 74 degrees at 7 AM, 76 degrees from 9AM to 6 PM, 77 degrees at 6 PM to 11 PM, 76 degrees at 11 PM back to 7AM. This has the effect of running the AC less in the day and early evening to be a good citizen regarding peak electric usage, it runs the AC more when I am under the covers which is when I like things cooler, the AC uses less energy when it is run with cooler night air temps, and it gives more even control over the indoor relative humidity. Why am I running the AC at night when the outside air temp is about 70 degrees? Because it is 70 degrees of pure muggy, and opening the windows would waste energy because I would lose in the humidity control game.
I would like to have a thermostat that maintains a nearly constant dewpoint temperature in the house -- that would be closer to what I want than my ramped thermostat setting. Carrier makes a thermostat which controls AC to a relative humidity setting, which is not quite the same thing. Maybe someone out there could hack together such a thing out of a Basic Stamp microcontroller.
And for those with environmental concerns, I air condition the upstairs to 76 degrees, 50 percent RH (avg), dehumidify the basement to 65 degrees, 60 percent RH for about 300 kWHr ($25 of electricity) for a hot summer month -- an average electric draw of about 400 watts. For the same electric usage as a bunch of fans, I stay cool, comfortable, and I save enough money on allergy pills to pay for the electricity, and keep the windows closed a night so I don't have to listen to the loudspeaker of the neighborhood swimming pool. Thank you Mr. Carrier.
I don't know why all you non-US people are whining about our use of A/C :)
First of all, modern architects are VERY aware of how to build houses to be more naturally cool. Things like extra insulation in the attic, double-paned windows, etc can help keep the house better insulated.
This translates into a lower electric bill, which is a major concern. In fact, we are looking at getting another couple of inches of insulation blown into the attic in this house to help cut down on the amount of time we have to run the A/C.
Also note that all modern A/C systems use R-134a, which has about -zero- negative effects on the environment. Granted, it takes time to switch everything over, but it is happening.
A/C has changed the way we live. There is no sense in wishing it hadn't, because it is here to stay. Much better to make the best of the situation, with more energy-efficient units and houses with better insulation.
*P.S. temperature has nothing to do with 'catching a cold', as some posters here have seemed to imply. A cold is a virus.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
As far as I'm concerned, air conditioning is the SINGLE GREATEST INVENTION OF THE 20TH CENTURY. Yes. I know this is /. so I should be singing the praises of Linux, but I would willingly hand over my computer; they'd have to rip my A/C from my cold, dead hands.
Of course, if I were back in the Bay Area (where I'm orignially from), I may feel differently (I'm in the northeast now).
I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.
Buffalo has invented the two of the most important advances... Air Conditioning and Buffalo Wings...
100% Insightful
Air conditioning, as opposed to refrigeration, dates from 1911, when Willis Carrier published his famous paper Rational Psychrometric Formulae. Carrier showed how both air temperature and humidity could be controlled simultaneously. Previous cooling systems mostly controlled temperature, usually at the expense of humidity control. Carrier put the basic theory underneath the technology, which took it from one-off demonstration systems to a usable technology.
NOW I know why most Europeans smell so bad in the summer. Not only do you guys have something against deodorant and shaving your pits, but you're also anti-air conditiong as well. Jebus it must RANK over there.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Which revolutionaries? It's not just being hot that causes revolutions. Was the Bastille stormed because the Third Estate didn't have air conditioning?
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
I live in a condo with nice high ceilings, lots of open space and airflow, and don't need or miss air conditioning (though we've got one room a/c downstairs that we've never used.) I spend more on heat in the winter time than I ever did in New Jersey, where we had real winter. (Half of that is because I've got electric heat - the place was built in the mid 70s, and doesn't have much insulation, either.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I was going to blast someone then I realized it was air conditoning(1900's biz speak?) and not refridgeration(I never know if I spell that right...need dictionary).
Argentina had the first refriderated(see!)ships to deliver beef to the rest of the world.
A Florida company delivered orange juice in a ship like it too.
OK I'm off to look for a dictionary...
Now I have to have TWO celebrations today...first I gotta celebrate the anniversary of "Code Red", now this!
the heat load comes from the afternoon sun from the west. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Does this refresh your memory?
I'm just wondering if any of us would be here if there was no Airconditioning at all
Yes, Buffalo used to be so *huge*... the streets and roads are so overbuilt... there are hardly ever any traffic jams in Buffalo for the morning or afternoon commute (unless u life in a suburb of Buffalo, the jams are uaually outside city limits)... anyways.. yes, some of us who live here believe it is a 100 year curse brought on by the assaination of McKinley during the PanAm Expo that has caused our downfall. But who believes in those things anyways... well,time to check my horoscope.... *grin*
"Trusting every aspect of our lives to a giant computer was the smartest thing we ever did.." Homer Simpson
"In 25 minutes, only three people walked by the plant at Broadway and Mortimer Street. One was pushing all his belongings in a shopping cart."
I wonder if the DMCA says anything about royalties on inventions from dying cities? I'm sure it could be made to say this with enough corporate interest.
Anyone here have enough corporate interest?
Brian
A little hotter down south...like, say, 90 degrees *at night*? How about at 7am? Is that what you mean by a little hotter? Tourist season in Louisiana is over in May for a reason...
I used to live in PA, and I never used AC, even when it was 105 out. Now, I run the AC all summer, mainly to keep the humidity at bay, and only in the back section of the house (kitchen/bedroom). Granted I live in a "shotgun house" which was designed to maximize breeze through and around the house. But when there ain't a breeze, ya gotta make one. I'm about 2 blocks from the Mississippi, so I get a good breeze when its there to get.
I agree with the idea that "AC breeds the need for AC". I believe the shock of leaving a 68 degree house into 100 degree heat, getting into a 140 degree car and cooling it down to 68, is no good for the human body.
I cool the house to 80-85 and heat it to 60-65, which is a good comfort zone.
...Time is the best teacher, unfortunately it kills all of its students.
If you live in a hot climate you _need_ air conditioning. If you're lucky to live in a nice climate you don't need it.
Due to spatial factors you still need areas with a reasonable population density to maintain a competitive economy.
It is a nightmare to have a high population density in a hot humid climate without air conditioning.
I personally find it difficult to be productive when it's above 32 degrees C. In very hot conditions having a siesta is not really sleeping, it's more like passing out due to the heat! Whereas in a cooler environment I can remain pretty alert and functional for hours.
In most offices if the air conditioning breaks down, everyone might as well go home. So for countries with cities in such climates or city states like Singapore, air conditioning is of critical importance.