September 23, 2019 • 50 mins
Air conditioning has had a profound impact on modern life -- and in more ways than you might realize. In this trio of Invention episodes, Robert and Joe explore pre-AC cooling methods, the invention itself and the many ways it changed the shape (and temperature) of our lives.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick, and we're back with part three of our
exploration of air conditioning. And what do we talk about
in the last couple of parts. Uh, Well, we we
took a journey. We first of all, we we started
(00:24):
in uh, in the ancient world, and we talked about
just how people have approached living in hot environments, in
in hot cities, especially uh, you know, since the dawn
of human civilization. Yeah, And some of these solutions for
dealing with the heat before the invention of air conditioning
were cultural. They were like about you know where life
(00:45):
takes place, and you know where you do certain things
and under what conditions. And other solutions would be more architectural,
Like we talked about that ingenious solution from ancient Persia
involving the wind catchers and the underground channels of water
called the connots that would cool the air that flowed
through buildings that way. And of course, millions of people
in hot climates around the world still don't have air
(01:08):
conditioning today, and they use older techniques and strategies to
deal with the heat. So a lot of these things
we're talking about are not things of the past. They're just, uh,
they're less a part of culture in places where air
conditioning is now prevalent. But then, of course we got
into the invention of the true air conditioning system, right.
We talked about John Gory, the doctor from Appalachical of
(01:30):
Florida who developed a chemical process for manufacturing ice for
the purpose of cooling hospital rooms. Also we talked about
the ice King, Frederick Tutor in the ice trade, which
was a fun diversion. And we also talked about Willis Carrier,
the American inventor who created a dehumidification process for industrial
printing spaces. But then of course quickly realized that this
(01:52):
technology could be used to cool and dry the air
for human comfort in homes and businesses. And that's sort
of that that's the money in site, right that, you know,
the rubbing the fingers together moment. And so of course
this luxury had massive appeal when it was new. Having
a cool building during the sweltering days of August. Imagine
when that was a near total novelty. Yeah, And so
(02:15):
this episode is going to to look at how this
novelty unfolded, particularly in the United States, but also looking
at some examples from elsewhere in the world, UH, to
show how it ends up transforming UH society to a
certain extent, certainly, and also transforming a number of other
aspects of our modern life. I think you could argue
(02:36):
that the legacy of air conditioning is one of the
most underappreciated technological influences shaping the last hundred years of
especially American culture, but culture probably all over the world.
I mean, certainly for those of us who grew up
with it. You know, if you if you grew up
in a time during which air conditioning was readily available,
(02:57):
if you grew up uh, you know, but privileged enough
to to have access to air conditioning all the time,
and of course if you lived in an environment where
it was a practical necessity. Because certainly, as was well discussed,
there are plenty of places in the world where you
don't need an air conditioning system even a window unit,
or if you do, you rarely need to employ it,
(03:19):
So maybe you have less of an appreciation for it
in those places. Yeah, I was actually to talk. I
was just out of town for a little while. I
went on a vacation to England and France, and they're
pretty much all the places we stayed in did not
have air conditioning. And it was you know, this was
during September, still pretty warm outside while we were there,
(03:39):
but we just opened the windows up and nice cool
air flows in all all the time. And like, it's
amazing the difference between the difference of opening a window
in Paris versus opening a window in Atlanta on a
summer evening, which is just like, you know, it just
lets the swamp air right in. It doesn't seem to
cool enough. Yeah. Yeah, um places also come to mind, Hawaii,
(04:02):
or at least parts of why you'll you'll find in
a lot of people living happily without an air conditioning
system just because you have a regular, you know, dependable
temperature more you know, year round. But also you get
a nice specific breeze, which is less the case in
a lot of places around the world where you know,
you open a window and it just doesn't seem to
(04:24):
relieve very much, especially if you live in one of
these houses that has not been designed to create cross
breezes and all that, right, houses that have been designed
to depend upon air conditioning. Yeah, so Uh, yeah, we're
gonna pick up more or less where we left out
off then. And so this new invention was impressing people.
People were thinking a lot about how to roll it out.
(04:44):
Industrial buildings and hospitals were some of the first to
jump in their hospitals, not surprising since the hospital plays
into the origin story itself. And then, of course, uh,
you're you're probably wondering, well, who is the first person
to put one of these puppies in their home, because
obviously that's the reality most of us, or a lot
of us anyway, live in Well, Charles Gates, son of
(05:07):
industrialists and uh and gambler John Gates, was the first
to set one up in their home in nineteen fourteen.
And get this, Minneapolis, Minapolis, what not in Florida, not
in Texas or that's strange? Well, hey, I mean because
basically we're looking at a time during which to have
(05:27):
a home air conditioning system was a manner matter of
just pure privilege and in luxury and uh, and that's
not going to be confined by you know, geographic constraints.
But man, in Minneapolis, I mean, how many years, how
many months of the year would that even be useful? Well,
it also makes me wonder how many months the year
could you depend on this thing to work, because because
(05:48):
one of the point, one of the things we're going
to touch on here is how some of these systems
were were a little problematic, so innovations in the nineteen
twenties would make them smaller and more more affordable and
allowed the tech to spread. But as Marcia E. Ackerman
points out in her book Cool Comfort, which is an
excellent book about the UH the History of of air
(06:10):
conditioning UH in the United States, she points out that
in the early twentieth century especially, there were not many
places where an investment in a costly a C system
would give you a return on your investment, except for quote,
huge halls in which multitudes assembled for entertainment. Okay, yeah,
because I mean otherwise it is just a matter you've
(06:31):
got to be this this super rich individual who can
just blow a whole bunch of money on an air
conditioning system. You need something where you're actually going to
be able to make the money back on it. And
of course this leads us inevitably to theaters, and she
points out that there were some early success stories even
before this point, with just traditional theaters such as uh
an eight eight performance by Edwin Booth and yes, uh
(06:55):
related to the other Booth actor really yeah, yeah, they
were brothers, I believe, um, but rather different individuals. And
Edwin Booth, you know, and a famous individual within uh
you know, the acting scenes, certainly of New York City.
So but anyway, there was an eighteen eighty performance by
Edwin Booth on a hundred degree day in New York
(07:16):
City's Madison Square Theater and it was described at the
time by English novelist Mary Duff's hardy um and it's
you know, because she was really impressed with it, and
it's like here you go into this theater and it's
it's sweltering outside and it's cool inside. Because generally, if
you within a time before air conditioning, what happens when
a whole bunch of people gathering in inclosed space to
watch performance. Okay, so that's a teen eighty and that's
(07:38):
before Willis carriers, So they must have been using some
more primitive method to cool the theater there. Yeah, but
there were there were also a lot of failures during
this time and and certainly in the decades to follow.
Getting the early twentieth century, you know, despite the realization
that a C could really turn things around for sweaty
spectator events. Also in the early twentieth century, they were
(07:59):
public health and initiatives to legislate ventilation in places like
this in order to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses
like tuberculosis. So this brings us, of course to the
movie theaters, because it's the movie theater of where we're
going to see the real rollout of air conditioning. You know,
a lot of this was during the Great Depression as well,
(08:19):
you know, a time of of of great economic hardship.
So there would there would have been new a C technology,
but people wouldn't have had a lot of excess income
to spend on installing them in their houses exactly like,
so that the technology is really coming on board, but
there's a very little market for for home use. But
theaters saw a return on their investment by deploying them.
(08:41):
And some think that the air conditioning helped usher in
the golden age of Hollywood. That's really interesting. Now not
to discount all those B movies of the nineteen thirties,
or the newsreels or the shorts, because you know, what
better time than the Great depression to escape into the
realm of cinema while also staying abreast of current events.
But on top of that, it was actually cool inside.
It was dry inside even better right. Uh And this
(09:03):
has also been presented as part of the origin of
the summer movie blockbuster. Okay also makes sense. Yeah. And
if you go on to YouTube or you know related side,
and you look around, you can find some wonderful promos
from this era that heavily advertised the air conditioning. I
found one from nineteen forty nineties advertising the theater as
(09:25):
the coolest place in town. Yeah. I checked out these
links you sent. Oh one of them. It starts with
the line if nature is wonderful, then our air conditioning
system is out of this world hyphenated. Somebody hyphens in
English texts at the time, especially in ads, but also
I in a different article I was reading, I found
a reference to a nineteen twenty six ad for a
(09:46):
movie theater in St. Petersburg, Florida, which said the proud
management had the temperature down so low that ladies in
evening dresses almost froze. Another thing that I noticed about
these ads is uh, some implicating that cool air conditioned
air is somehow clean as opposed to what I guess
(10:07):
like dirty warm air. We talked to the previous part
of the series about why cold water psychologically seems cleaner
than tepid water. Is something similar going on here, like
does it feel like cold air coming out of the
air conditioner? Is is sterile? Is clean somehow? I mean
you can still catch you know, TV being circulated through it.
I'm sure, yeah, yeah, I think. I mean, I guess
(10:30):
it comes down to just the feeling that it is refreshing,
and refreshment is good refreshment, and then we equate that
with health, and you know, we probably buy into some
of these old concepts like the asthma theory to some extent,
even if we're not familiar with the term, Like, there's
a legacy of the kind of of that kind of belief,
and I'm a guilty of it as anyone like I
remember as a kid, like like I would I would
(10:52):
love to just stick my face against the air conditioning though,
and just take in the cold air. I wouldn't do
that with the with the heat, but with the cold air,
it was just this feeling that this was pure, you know,
even though obviously wasn't This is a funny memory. I
remember when I was much younger, during times when I
was having anxiety, Like you know, I was freaking out
(11:13):
about whatever my little mind was freaking out about back then.
But I remember leaning over an air conditioner and breathing
the cold air coming out of the vent somehow was
anxiety relieving to me with a little mask. I did
not have a mask, but yeah, I don't know why
that was, but at any right, this became just part
(11:33):
of the theater offering. And, as Ackerman points out in
her book quote, by promising to do more for comfort
and health than simply move air around, air conditioning reinforce
the novelty, modernity, and luxury of the movie going experience.
This is so interesting because it could be another one
of the many ways that we don't often consider brute
(11:55):
force technological realities influencing media throughout history. You know, we
like to think of movies and books and recorded music
and all that solely as products of the creative process
by the artist. You know, they're just they're creative output.
But these works of art and forms of entertainment are
they're highly influenced by brute facts about the physical conditions
(12:17):
under which they were produced or under which they are
experienced by the audience. And we talked about this in
our Motion Picture episode, Yeah You Want You want to.
You probably prefer the idea that people were just enraptured
by these these cinematic marvels taking place, and not so
much that well, they they're they're groin was just super
sweaty and they're just tired of walking around and swamp pants.
(12:38):
But that's sort of coming at it from the opposite perspective.
I mean, we talked a lot about physical realities influencing
the early days of film from the production side, right,
you know, like about the the standard lengths and you know,
whether they had sound with them and all that, and
that influenced conventions of the genres early on, or the
fact that there was no film editing early on. But
(12:59):
then this is coming at it from the other side,
just like the conditions under which films are shown had
something to do with the business of film in those days,
which ultimately dictated something about what kinds of films were
successful and what kinds of films were made. I mean,
I'm thinking about how if I was just going into
a theater to get out of the heat, and that's
all it was. What would I what? What kind of
(13:21):
movie would I want to see? I might just want
to see whatever movies longest or or indeed, like just
give me a block of stuff. It can be films
that can be sure, it's it gonna be the newsreel.
I'll just set for whatever. Uh just just just show
it to me and let me cool down a little.
So according to the U. S Department of Energy, uh
A C units started making their way into theaters in
(13:41):
the nineteen twenties, and the earliest systems, though, were simply
heating systems that were modified with refrigeration equipment, which managed
to cool the lower seats but left the balcony muggy
and sweltering, and there are even accounts of people on
the lower levels having to wrap their feet in newspaper
paper to stay warm again while people in the balcony
sweated it out. And it wasn't until nineteen two that
(14:04):
Carrier installed the first true theater A C system in
the Metropolitan Theater in Los Angeles, and then the Rivoli
Theater in New York got an updated version in nine
and UH they revol he proudly advertised at the time
that they kept their theater cooled to a constant sixty
nine degrees fahrenheit or twenty six degrees celsius. That is,
(14:27):
I mean, to each their own, But that is too cold. Yeah,
I think once you get lower if you're talking about fahrenheit,
once you get lower than the low seventies, what the
heck are you doing? Yeah, Like, I'm not one to
turn the thermostat in my own house down anywhere near
that low. And and if I go into a place
that is that. I mean. The other thing is like,
you're not going to be dressed for it. I mean,
(14:48):
I'm I think we all have experienced a cold theater before,
so imagined A lot of us know that if you're
going to a movie theater, you bring a hoodie, you
bring a jacket, etcetera. But but I'm imagining these like
people hot on the street looking to get out of
the heat and set down for a couple of hours
and watch the cinema and then uh, and then they
get in there and they're just gonna be like chilled
(15:09):
to the bone right because they're not dressed for it.
They didn't bring blankets with them. It's a it's a
three dog theater experience. Yeah, other theaters would boast that
it was quote twenty degrees cooler inside, which in some
cases was apparently arguable. Though that there were theaters where
people complained about the cold or said they actually became
(15:31):
ill because of the cold. There were even charges of
a c abuse. What does that mean that they were
just just chilling people out too much? Okay, yeah, this
apparently didn't I've been assaulted with an air conditioning unit. Yeah, yeah,
I mean. And also the whole time they're using icicles
and egg luede decorations and the promotion of it. I
saw some wonderful pictures where it is they're just really
(15:52):
driving at home, like come into the winter wonderland off
this theater. And there was apparently a lot of back
and forth, and this Acraman goes into more detail about
it with you know, certain crusaders for warmer theaters, uh,
you know, really getting some pressed. But then but but
the thing is it didn't apparently hurt ticket sales in
any like real meaningful way, and Ackerman points out that
the first drive in movie theater opened in June three
(16:16):
in Camden, New Jersey, and became a major force. Of course,
you know, in the nineteen fifties a major cultural force,
very popular. But their popularity challenges the notion that people
only wanted a chilly movie going experience, uh, which most
cars of the time, or maybe all cars at the time,
we're not air conditioned, right, Yeah, and the generally you're
(16:36):
turning your car off, turning the engine off. You're not
running the a C the whole time, right, It's it's
about watching a film more or less outdoors. And then
it wasn't just movie theaters during the Great Depression. Apparently restaurants, bakeries, libraries,
and museums eventually began uh experimenting with you know, enhanced
air conditioned environments and saw enhanced traffic because of it.
(17:00):
Department stores came into their own as well, and Ackerman
she hilariously describes uh department stores as basically being quote
theaters of things like that. But of course you can't
really charge admission to a department store, so you get
less of a return on an investment that way, and
(17:20):
she mentions like accounts of people who went to the
department store to stay cool and just like went around
trying on dresses they couldn't afford in order to just
to get out of the heat, but not really you know,
you know, spending that much money there. Oh, I don't know.
I mean I can see you get more people into
the store exposed to the merchandise. Would I would find
(17:41):
it hard to believe you don't end up selling more
somehow that way. Yeah, And then I think most I
imagine that, you know, stores are going to to realize that,
you know, maybe they're not going to sell a big,
expensive dress to somebody on their first visit, but then
they're smaller things they can sell. There's uh, you know,
food and drink, et cetera. Maybe what you gotta do
is you gotta pair air can to and interior with
(18:01):
really pushy salespeople. Now, It's also important to note that
while ticket prices and locations made a c movie theaters
especially a great distraction for a lot of people during
these these decades that were discussing here, this was certainly
a part of American life. It was affected by segregation definitely.
Ackerman points out that until the nineteen sixties, overt policies
(18:22):
and local customs made movie theaters far less accessible to
black audiences, especially in the South. We're talking poor seats
alternative viewing times and also just alternative theaters altogether, and
quote movie theaters and ethnically or racially segregated neighborhoods generally
lacked the palatial appertinences, including air conditioning of the big
(18:45):
downtown movie houses. This is another one of those areas
that people might not even think about the legacy of
segregation and racial disparity and access to to you know,
technology is basic access to climate control comfort. Yeah yeah,
all right, Well, on that note, we're gonna take a
quick break, but when we come back, we're going to
continue to look at the impact of air conditioning technology. Alright,
(19:11):
we're back. So the impact of air conditioning technology is huge,
and we can see it in various ways. So on
the individual level, certainly it made it easier and or
more comfortable to live in hotter regions of the earth,
and you know, and on the other hand, it also
meant that the climates that once forced us out socializing
amongst each other, be it at a pond step well
(19:34):
or just from porch to porch in the neighborhood, now
forced us inside either into communal a c environments such
as some of the ones we've discussed uh, you know,
hopefully like a museum or something, or or perhaps a library.
But but it also might just put us in there
in our own individual a c caves cut off from
everyone else, perhaps with that television or that radio. Not
(19:56):
to keep this company, this media socialization, which you know,
remains I think a detrimental aspect of our society to
this day. That's a depressing thought. Yeah, but of course
now our stuff are our technologies mobile, so it's not
even confined via by air conditioning. I do want to
make a quick health note. We mentioned U tuberculosis earlier. Uh,
(20:18):
there are a few different health problems that are associated
with air conditioning, most notably Legionaire's disease caused by the
Legionella bacteria or a few by you know, all varieties
of Legionella bacteria. Uh. And uh, you know it also
can contaminate hot water tanks, hot tubs, and cooling towers.
But contaminating the water in an air conditioning system is
certainly one of the factors. So not to not to
(20:42):
scare everyone about air conditioning, but again it is not
properly maintained. Yes, it is susceptible to this sort of thing. Now,
one of the ways that we already sort of hinted
that there was a legacy to air conditionings in the
way that it made many former adaptive techniques of our cultures,
in our architecture obsolete in some cases, right, Yeah, it
(21:03):
enabled architectural designs that wouldn't have worked as well or
at all in a pre air conditioning world, and this
includes a suburban tract housing. One of the greatest examples, though,
is the advent of steel and glass skyscrapers a C
cool towers of the modern age that without that a
C would not make as much sense. Yeah. There have
(21:24):
even been opinions from architects about the the impact of
air conditioning on sort of the the aesthetic design of
large buildings. I was reading a Chronicle of Higher Education
article that decided a quote from the architect Eli Jacque
Khan in nineteen sixty where con said quote, the period
of individualistic, imaginatively decorated skyscraper towers has ended. All of
(21:47):
this Modern equipment, including the cooling towers for air conditioning systems,
takes space and the logistical area was at the top
of the structure, resulting in a bulky and not too
handsome mass. So he's totally grossed out by the architecture
that results from having to put large air conditioning units
on the roofs of large buildings, which just results in
(22:09):
sort of boxy buildings instead of the beautiful skyscrapers that
he liked and designed. Yeah, you wanted to be like
the sky temple, uh to gozer at the time, you know,
otherwise you're I mean really it really. I think that
does come back to the to the point like what
is the legacy of of of human uh constructed monoliths.
The top of it needs to be the peak of
(22:29):
a mountain. It needs to be a holy place for
the world of of humans meets the world of the gods,
and it doesn't. It just ruins it if you put
an air conditioning system on top of a zigaratte, right right.
But even if you're not a priest of the urban zigaratte,
if you're not obsessed with the design of sky, you know,
skyscrapers like khan Is, I mean, you can definitely see
(22:50):
the way that it affected architecture at a smaller scale. Yeah. Yeah,
when you come down to materials, certainly, even you don't
even have to talk about the giant skyscrapers. There's a
point brought up in a really cool Mental Floss article
Life Before air Conditioning by one miss Selania. I. Somehow
I think that's a moniker. I have to ask to
ask Will about that one. Uh. But this article points
(23:13):
out the caves and underground housings are a natural means
of controlling temperature. But that means that thick brick and
stone construction is a good way to duplicate the same
principle in our constructions. But air conditioning meant that you
didn't have to depend on thick materials like this as much.
Housing could be far cheaper. High ceilings were no longer
(23:35):
as essential to keep things cool. Upper floors were not
just for the evening. You could live in the attic
if you wanted to, because you could. You could just
plug in a superpowered a C and you're good to go.
You could sleep inside during the summer, you know, with
your television burning right next to you right well. I mean,
another way to think about it is that air conditioning
(23:55):
also affected the planning of cities because air conditioning makes
it more feasible for hot climate areas to have high
density housing. You know, so like you can you can
have tall rise apartment buildings in Florida or something, whereas previously,
I mean, trying to imagine that without air conditioning sounds
pretty hot. Yeah. So you're changing the house, you're changing neighborhoods,
(24:18):
you're changing cities, and and just on the level of
an individual house, it's important to note that houses are
not just physical structures. They are social structures. And you
cannot alter the physical domicile without also altering the shape
of life within it. Change the shape of the house,
and you might, you know, think everything's gonna be just
like it was before, but it's it's gonna be a
(24:38):
little different. I think that's a really good point. I mean,
our architecture shapes our lives. Yeah, the rooms were in
determine what kind of things we do in them. Uh.
There's this classic thing like why does everybody end up
in the kitchen at a party. There is some reason
for that, and there's something about kitchens that you know,
people filter in that way. Yeah, they all. Yeah, hopefully
(25:00):
you have some sort of like an island situation in
the kitchen for people to gather around. Uh. Yeah, otherwise
they're just gonna be sitting on the stove or something
that does make me wonder though, And I didn't see
this reflected in any of the sources we're looking at.
But obviously one of the strategies to keep your home
cooler was that you would have the kitchen in another building,
(25:22):
so where would people gather there? Is that that was
more of the age of the sitting room. I guess, yeah,
I guess so. Or I mean, again, we've talked about
outdoor cooking is one way of dealing with the heat. Um,
you know, like the idea of the barbecue tradition or
grilling out that seems to be a thing that people
like to do in the summer. I mean, on one hand,
it's like it's a nice, you know, warm weather outside,
(25:43):
so people hang out outside. But then on the other hand,
it's like you're not having to do your heating up
of the food inside the house, which is great. And furthermore,
you can think about, you know, the the association of
outdoor cooking techniques specifically with hotter climates, like you know,
the barbecue and the grill out. These are common in
(26:04):
the US South, and I think they come from those
hot weather traditions. I wonder how air conditioning has affected
the prevalence or the prominence of the cook out. Well,
it certainly means you can you can duck in and
out right now, speaking of city planning, another aspect of
of all of this is you have all this air
conditioning running in the buildings, It suddenly gives you a
(26:25):
little more license to neglect the maintenance of green spaces
and trees, which, of course they're providing shade finding more
than shade though, I mean, they're they're they're part of
your natural environment. That's why you've seen in many cities,
including our own city there there have been initiatives over
the years to like to make sure that the areas
that have been that have lost their green spaces. Uh there,
(26:46):
you know, you can plant some trees there again and
actually bring these places back to life once more. But
from like a purely air conditioning standpoint, you don't really
need those trees out front. Really they're there, the trees
that are, you know, lining the sidewalk around the skyscraper,
what what purpose are they They're playing here? Just something
you have to clean up after, right. I love that
(27:09):
mentality that sees anything alive as a nuisance. Yeah, Like
and people say, well, you know, it's it's help, it's creating,
helping to create the air you breathe, and like no, no, no,
the air I breathe comes out of event in the wall, right,
those could be parking spaces, parking spaces for God's sake.
So so you know, we haven't gotten into you know,
and we're not going to get into all the details
(27:30):
of air conditionings impact. But hopefully, like so far, we're
able to drive home sort of the ripple effects here
that that really touched on just about every aspect of society. Now,
another one of these ripple effects we've already alluded to,
and that is going to become more and more salient
as time goes on, I believe, is the energy consumption.
(27:52):
And so the energy consumption and the concurrent carbon outputs
created by air conditioning demands. Yeah, absolutely, air conditioning depends
on electricity. And as Lucas Davis of UC Berkeley pointed
out in in the Global Impact of air Conditioning Big
and Getting Bigger, we've seen hot regions of the world
(28:13):
grow hotter, uh and hot regions of the world grow richer.
And as these trends continue, it just adds to the
energy demands of keeping cool. For instance, Uh, they wrote
that more than sixty million air conditioners are sold each
year in China, and again this was when this was
written as as as in a typical window unit uses
(28:34):
ten to twenty times as much electricity as a ceiling fan.
On top of that, they depend on refrigerants that are
potent greenhouse gases. Uh. Davis argues that carbon legislation and
carbon taxing are probably the best way to avoid falling
off the carbon cliff here, even as the technology grows
more energy efficient and you know, better energy sources come
(28:54):
online to aid. But yeah, this is but we often
don't think about just the I mean you probably about
your own energy, uh, you know, costs road concerning air conditioning.
I mean it's it's hard not to when you look
at the power bill for a particularly hot summer month.
But you know, you have to realize that that's happening
in every house, you know, in the in you know,
throughout this city and his other parts of the world
(29:16):
get more of the air conditioning bug themselves, You're just
going to see more of that. Yeah, and uh, and
it's also not just in the houses, but these large
industrial or commercial spaces which I think are a huge
part of the footprint. But yeah, I mean it's it's
one of these binds you're in. I mean, like it's
hard not to to love and appreciate the comfort provided
(29:40):
by air conditioning if you live in a hot climate,
especially in the summer. But another thing that should be
pointed out here when you said a typical window a
C unit, which is probably gonna be using less energy
than like your big central A C unit um uses
ten to twenty times as much electricity as a ceiling fan.
The other side of that is that ceiling fans are
incredibly energy efficient. I mean, you get a really good
(30:02):
bang for your buck in terms of how much cooler
they make you feel compared to how much energy they use.
So another way to think about this is, you know,
if you've got your A C unit, you're trying to
be energy conscious, but also you're like, I don't know
if I can beat the heat in the hottest days
without it. I mean, you know, think about at what
point you can deal with just having the ceiling fan on,
(30:24):
and then at whatever point where you can't hack it anymore, well,
then you know, you go to your A C god.
But if you're a c is like mine. Like sometimes
you reach that point and you're like, I don't think
you can catch up. It's too late. Yeah, I should
have been fighting this battle all day, despite you know,
the problems involved with that. Uh yeah. So, and then
of course you just grow accustomed to air conditioning. I
(30:45):
guess that's the other side of it as well. Well.
I just meant to emphasize ceiling fans. Very good, big
thumbs up to ceiling fans in my opinion. Oh yeah.
And then of course you can flip the switch during
the during the winter and use them to know more
to you know, quite a push warm air back down. Alright,
we're gonna take one more break, but when we come back,
(31:06):
we're going to continue to look at the way air
conditioning changed the world. Alright, we're back. So I guess
we were just going to talk about a couple more
things here about the legacy of air conditioning. We know
that the legacy of air conditioning has been huge, But
(31:26):
I was reading a paper by the American historian Raymond
Arsenal about the impact of air conditioning on the culture
of the American South. Uh. And this paper was originally
published in the Journal of Southern history in nineteen four
it's called the End of the Long Hot Summer. The
air Conditioner and Southern Culture, and Arsenal talks in this
paper about how the air conditioner should be thought of
(31:49):
as one of the biggest factors shaping the evolution of
the American South in the twentieth century. So, on one hand,
he says, well, it created a lot of Uh. It
basically created a lot of economic opportunity where it wasn't before.
Like it drew in immigrants from other places in the
United States to come to the South and work there,
(32:11):
a lot of different kinds of buildings and businesses to
take up route there because buildings could now be air conditioned.
But over this time, the way people viewed air conditioning
transition from quote from a luxury to an amenity to
a necessity where you know, people more and more all
the time think of it as something that's not like
(32:31):
nice to have, but something you've got to have. Yeah. Absolutely.
I mean if today, especially in the United States, you
travel somewhere perhaps abroad, uh and you you find out
that it's it's something that a room is not air conditioned,
or a vehicle it's not air conditioned. Uh. Yeah, and
it feels a bit like like like hearing that there's
gonna be no running water or no, you know, no
toilets or something along along those lines. Yeah, totally. That's
(32:55):
kind of a self fulfilling prophecy, as we've been alluding
to before, because the more are the more we come
to take air conditioning for granted, the more we build
our lives around it and make it harder and harder
to live without it. Yeah, and indeed build out into
places where it would not make sense to live without it.
I mean, for instance, you think like some of these
really hot days we had this summer, uh, and how
(33:17):
they impacted say, say, people living in Phoenix, Arizona. You know.
And it's certainly especially if you're dealing with older individuals.
I mean, there were and are people that are having
to live out on the streets. You know, there becomes
a real concern, a health concern of the high temperatures.
Oh yeah, they like hot days can kill people, they
do all the time. And so air conditioning one of
(33:40):
the things says that you know, air conditioning did in
many ways measurably improved life, Like it cut down on
deaths related to hot weather um. But on the other hand,
he's talking about how a lot of the cultural differences
and traditions that are associated with communities that live in
hot climates, including the American South, are a result of
(34:00):
the hot climate. You know, they're not it's not just incidental.
It's like, you know, like the cookout tradition. You know,
it's a result of the fact that there's hot weather.
And with the introduction of air conditioning, many of the
distinct cultural features that define cultures in hot climates diminish
over time. And so he sort of argues that climate
(34:21):
control has to some extent homogenized the United States as
a culture and reduced to sort of reduced some regional
variations that were derived from differences in temperatures throughout the year. UM.
And if Arsenal is correct in his thesis about the
American South, obviously this effect would not just be an
American phenomenon. Is similar thing could be happening anywhere that
(34:45):
air conditioning pervades hot climates, changing cultural practices and ways
of life along with it. Yeah, it just it basically
changes the equation for from modern living. Yeah. Now we've
talked a little bit about the commercial growth that results
due to air condition technology, especially in hotter regions, say
at the United States in the post war period. But
(35:05):
another thing to think about is that a c ends up,
you know, proving essential in the computer age is a
way to keep these machines from overheating. Oh yeah, I
mean we're filling our living spaces also with these machines
that are dumping a lot of heat constantly. I mean,
I wonder how much how much a computer heats up
(35:25):
a non air conditioned room or a bunch of computers. Yeah,
I'm sure there's some stats on that left of to
look and certainly how how into what extent has changed
over the years. Yeah. Now, there are other strange ways
the legacy of air conditioning could be even more powerful
than it first seems. For example, there are a bunch
of uh, there are a bunch of little threads of
(35:45):
social science research about heat and climate control and various
social outcomes at the broad level that are correlated with
heat and access to air conditioning. For example, I was
reading a September article by Jeff Asher in The New
or Times that examines a bunch of existing data on
the possible or supposed links between weather and crime. Now
(36:08):
when looking at stuff like this, I do want to
avoid something that that that actually Raymond arson Oh talks
about in his article, which is he calls it mono
causal climate, a logical determinism, you know, basically like looking
at the climate or the weather as like the one
cause it causal factor in you know, broad social trends. So, yeah,
you see this from time to time where it's like
(36:30):
hot cultures are like this, old cultures are like this,
U and sometimes there is you know, in specific areas,
there's I think there's more of a case to be made,
like I don't know, when you start talking about spices
and food and some of that comes into you know,
availability of spices as well. Oh. Absolutely, it's it's certainly
got to be the case that there are influences of
climate and temperature on culture. I think that's undeniable. It's
(36:53):
just that you want to avoid what he calls the
mono causal you know, climate alogical determinism where the temperature
or is the cause of social outcomes. Uh So we
would be careful not to do that, but look at
like possible links where where the temperature could be a
factor on broad social outcomes. And one example is the
(37:13):
long running documented link between hot weather and crime, hot
weather and murder rates, for example. Uh So, it seems
to be the case that if you just chart an
American city across a year, you're very likely to see
a pattern where the hotter it is, the more people
get murdered. Asher writes. Quote in Philadelphia, for example, there
were two point six shooting victims per day on average
(37:36):
when it was cold, three point four on pleasant days,
and four point four on hot days. And that's for
a period I think of the mid teens um And
so this really does seem to be related to temperature,
because while the rates of indoor shootings stay mostly the
same throughout the year, the rates of outdoor shootings increase
(37:56):
noticeably the hotter it is interesting. Well, one of the
things that you know about crime, that is, people have
a negativity bias about trends and crime. People always think
things are worse than they've ever been. There's more crime,
there's more violent today in the United States. That that
is not true at all. Violent crime has been dropping
for decades in the United States. Murder rates are at
(38:18):
a you know, multi decade low. Uh So. Uh but
also there's something interesting going on there. You don't want
you certainly don't want to overstate potential causality, But I
wonder if could increased access to air conditioned homes in
the summer partially contribute to decreases in crime over time,
to decreases in violent crime over time, because you know,
(38:40):
if if you're seeing that there is some impact of
like people being outside in hot weather on hot days
with rates of violence, could access to air conditioned interior
interior spaces actually play some role there for some inside
with the television, so then they're they're safer, but then
they feel less safe because they're watching, uh, the murders
(39:03):
that are occurring exaggerated and just chewed upon on the television. Well,
I do think TV TV coverage definitely contributes to that
negativity bias and people's beliefs about crime and things like that,
whatever the actual reasons, you know, whether air conditioning or
climate control or anything has anything to do with it
at all. Uh, it is certainly the case that you know,
(39:24):
violent crime is is at uh, you know, an exceedingly
low point compared to historical trends in the United States.
So don't buy into that it's always worse, you know,
it's worse than it's ever been idea, right of course,
And the other day they're into the spectrums the air
conditioning is is not going to solve all the world's problems. Um,
though there were I did. I did read a few
little snippets here about some granted, I think they were
(39:48):
into all individuals that were part of like the carrier
corporation or other refrigerator companies, refrigerator or air conditioning companies.
They were making like a case that like that we
can do it, this can this about world peace. And
I think the particular argument was not like social but
it was more like, hey, we're arguing we're getting in
all these scuffles over resources, but if we have enough
(40:08):
air conditioning, then we can get all the resources from
all the places and then we won't fight anymore, which
you know has not turned out to be the case. Yeah, yeah,
don't buy into that. Another interesting bit of social science
data that I was looking at about air conditioning is
the same article by Jeff Asher points it out. By
(40:29):
the way, an interesting piece of research by Harvard Kennedy
School Associate professor Joshua Goodman, who found a correlation between
cooler temperatures and increased academic performance. Quote, students scored lower
when they just experienced a hot school year than when
they just experienced a cool school year. But that air
(40:50):
conditioning in schools mostly eliminated the influence of heat on
academic performance. So you have an unusually hot school year
that tends to hurt academic performance if your school is
not air conditioned. Uh. And this sort of just intuitively
makes sense to me. It's like, you know, it's hot weather,
it seems like it's harder to focus on mental tasks
and things like that. Um, but that air conditioning inside
(41:13):
the schools mitigated this effect. Interesting. Yeah, I mean I
every time I pick up my son from school from
his elementary school, Uh, he'll come out and you know
often like hold his hand when walking away from school
doors and his hand will be so cold from the
air conditioning inside. But but yeah, I'm all for it
being there if it you know, it gives them in
(41:34):
the environment they need to learn. And with all these
social science findings, I think we should always be careful
not to read too much into single findings until there's
been a lot of replication and analysis or findings by
others in the field. So I think it's best to
sort of treat these as interesting preliminary findings. I will
I will say this, like, if you're in a cool
environment and you're prepared, you have a greater ability to
(41:55):
regulate your own temperature. You know, you can always put
on a jacket or a hoodie right in a in
an overly air conditioned space, no matter what the you know,
the realities of the energy consumption are there. Likewise, in
a hot space, there's generally only so much you can
take off, and there is an absolute limit to what
you can take off. Uh, you know, the social decorum aside. Right.
(42:18):
But but if either of these findings are on the
right track about like academic performance or crime, I mean,
you wonder in what other ways could temperature and climate
control be changing our society and our culture that you know,
we're not appreciating or haven't been studied numerically in these ways. Yeah.
Another thing to keep in mind is just a different
cultures are also going to have a different relationship with
(42:40):
being cool and being hot, things that have evolved due
to their you know, just their cultural exposure to different
temperatures or sometimes even ideas. I didn't get too far
into this because there's I wasn't encountering a lot of
scholarship about it. But for instance, and we've talked a
little bit about, you know, the rollout of air conditioning
in uh in in in China, and you know, there
(43:01):
are some interesting ideas about like what cold and hot
mean within traditional Chinese medicine, etcetera, and uh, and so
you know that that's one possibility to look at, like
how does how does that play out in the culture
that has certain values historically attached to say warm and
cold air. Oh, I want to know more about what
(43:21):
what are the values? I mean some of it gets
into two to yin and yang and you know and
so forth. UM. But some of the papers I was
finding where I was hesitant really include them because they
were like from the mostly from the seventies and eighties,
and they were dealing with like very rare cases of
people with UM they were experiencing frigi phobia, like a
(43:43):
fear of cold air and an aversion to air conditioned
spaces and uh. And so these papers were tying like
these rare cases in with potentially looking at potentially how
some of these ideas within Chinese culture affected these individuals
and I believe. I believe it was like in China
and Taiwan, and perhaps there was a case in Singapore
(44:03):
they were looking at um. But in in any way,
it's one of those things that I wouldn't want to
certainly wouldn't want to blow it out of proportion because
I think we're talking about very rare cases of people
with with with a with a with a mental illness. Yeah,
but but to what extent that is exasperated by ideas
that are present in a given culture. I mean, I
guess it's open for debate, but I would want to
(44:26):
I would want to read more about that before I
said anything more definitive. But it does serve as it
like an interesting just side example of like, well, here's
an idea of what cold and heat mean. Here's the
way it could, uh, in extreme cases present itself. But
then how does it end up presenting itself in more
in milder cases, you know, and and and more just
sort of uh, you know, ambiently throughout a culture. Another
(44:50):
thing I would think would probably be hugely significant that
we haven't really examined at all is how air conditioning
affects fashion. Yeah, like what what people wear in what
kinds of spaces, what's acceptable to wear? Yeah, I mean
I certainly wouldn't think think of it as much as fashion,
(45:11):
but like I generally prefer to wear a hoodie. Uh
and air conditioning allows me to do that year round,
you know. Climate control allows me to do it year round.
But then artificial climate tends to demand that you do it,
you know, so you generally, you know, if you especially
if you have an office job, you're having to dress
for an artificial environment and then also perhaps for the
(45:32):
environment that exists between the artificial environments that you spend
your time. Our office environment is very strange because you
get um so it's like artificially cold of course in
the summer because it's air condition but then at certain
times of day, if you're by the window, you become
an ant under the magnifying glass and that totally throws
(45:52):
everything off too. Yeah, yeah, this is I don't think
there's any like passive solar design employed here. And then
of course the studios themselves get really hot. Sometimes the
studios here are that sweaty growing you mentioned earlier. Well,
there you have an air conditioning A three partner here. Again,
we weren't able to cover everything in the history of
(46:12):
air conditioning, or certainly with refrigeration, which is at times
intertwined with with the history of air conditioning. But hopefully
we touched on some of the key ideas and perhaps
we've we've presented enough information that will that will, you know,
make you stop and think about the air conditioning that
you use in your life, maybe value it a little
(46:33):
bit more and realize that in many cases you know
it is it is more of a luxury. Um. But
we would love to hear from everyone out there, like
what is your relationship with air conditioning? Have you ever
lived without it? Uh? Particularly have you ever lived without
it in a hot climate? And how you know, what
did you do to manage it. We have already heard
back from some listeners on this, and I'm hopefully we'll
(46:53):
get to roll these out on a listener mail in
the future. Uh yeah. We heard from at least one
listener who grew up in India and who talked about
their experience not even thinking of sweat as a bad
thing the way most Americans do. Yeah, yeah, there's this
kind of American thing to think of, like any any
sweat that is occurring without your consent, is is a travesty,
(47:16):
you know, like like sweat is the thing that that
happens on my terms. Yeah, I admit I I fall
totally into that gid. Like I am cool with being
sweaty if I'm like hanging out outside, you know, or
I'm working outside or something like that. Can't stand being
sweaty if it's like what's the word. It's like if
you're sweaty on your way to work or something, that's
(47:38):
just the worst. Yeah. Well, we've also had lots of
media to really drive this home, right, lots of deodorant
commercials that really just drive home how gross it is
to be sweaty. There's something wrong with your body. Yeah,
I think I used to buy into that more. Now
I'm more of the mind that like like like feeling
sweaty like feels good. Like I think part of that
(48:00):
was from like sweating on my own terms, But then
I did enough of that where I'm like, oh, I'm
not even like really exerting myself, but it's hot out,
I'm sweating. It feels good to sweat. Um So, and
then of course it's you know, you're not going to
you're generally not going to smell bad until later anyway,
like that fresh sweat is not the problem. But I
would also love to hear from anyone about movie theaters.
(48:22):
How cold do you like your movie theater? Um? Are
you one of these people that would prefer to have
to wear a winter coat? Uh? And then Uh, I
know we've heard from some folk. When we talked about
the Tingler on our other show, stuff to Bow Your Mind,
we heard from some people who went to the theater
back in the day. So I would love to hear
from any you know, older members of the listening audience
out there that might be able to chime in about
(48:44):
theaters of old. What was it like going back then
and in the war between the Chili movie theater and
the the outdoor Um? Uh, drive in cinema? Which do
you prefer? Oh, it's got to depend on what you're seeing, right,
that's there. Yeah, there's some films that are more suitable
for the drive in, right. Yeah, let's be movie territory. Yeah,
(49:06):
I saw I think I saw the mcgruber movie at
the drive in. Oh, I guess that. I guess that's
a good one. I've I've only seen I think I've
only seen like classic horror films at the drive in.
Um No. I also saw the Grindhouse Movies at the
drive in. That was fun, the double feature. We are
fortunate enough in Atlanta that we do have we still
(49:26):
have a drive in theater that that folks can go
to all right. In the meantime, if you want to
check out other episodes of Invention, head on over to
invention pot dot com. That is where you'll find it.
If you want to check out our other show, Stuff
to Blow your Mind, that's Stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. And you can find both of these shows
wherever you get your podcasts and wherever you do get
your podcast I just make sure you rate and review us.
(49:47):
Bring all the stars, Bring all the love please uh
huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other
suggest topic for the future, just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at invention pod dot com.
(50:12):
Invention is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
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H
Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick, and we're back with part three of our
exploration of air conditioning. And what do we talk about
in the last couple of parts. Uh, Well, we we
took a journey. We first of all, we we started
(00:24):
in uh, in the ancient world, and we talked about
just how people have approached living in hot environments, in
in hot cities, especially uh, you know, since the dawn
of human civilization. Yeah, And some of these solutions for
dealing with the heat before the invention of air conditioning
were cultural. They were like about you know where life
(00:45):
takes place, and you know where you do certain things
and under what conditions. And other solutions would be more architectural,
Like we talked about that ingenious solution from ancient Persia
involving the wind catchers and the underground channels of water
called the connots that would cool the air that flowed
through buildings that way. And of course, millions of people
in hot climates around the world still don't have air
(01:08):
conditioning today, and they use older techniques and strategies to
deal with the heat. So a lot of these things
we're talking about are not things of the past. They're just, uh,
they're less a part of culture in places where air
conditioning is now prevalent. But then, of course we got
into the invention of the true air conditioning system, right.
We talked about John Gory, the doctor from Appalachical of
(01:30):
Florida who developed a chemical process for manufacturing ice for
the purpose of cooling hospital rooms. Also we talked about
the ice King, Frederick Tutor in the ice trade, which
was a fun diversion. And we also talked about Willis Carrier,
the American inventor who created a dehumidification process for industrial
printing spaces. But then of course quickly realized that this
(01:52):
technology could be used to cool and dry the air
for human comfort in homes and businesses. And that's sort
of that that's the money in site, right that, you know,
the rubbing the fingers together moment. And so of course
this luxury had massive appeal when it was new. Having
a cool building during the sweltering days of August. Imagine
when that was a near total novelty. Yeah, And so
(02:15):
this episode is going to to look at how this
novelty unfolded, particularly in the United States, but also looking
at some examples from elsewhere in the world, UH, to
show how it ends up transforming UH society to a
certain extent, certainly, and also transforming a number of other
aspects of our modern life. I think you could argue
(02:36):
that the legacy of air conditioning is one of the
most underappreciated technological influences shaping the last hundred years of
especially American culture, but culture probably all over the world.
I mean, certainly for those of us who grew up
with it. You know, if you if you grew up
in a time during which air conditioning was readily available,
(02:57):
if you grew up uh, you know, but privileged enough
to to have access to air conditioning all the time,
and of course if you lived in an environment where
it was a practical necessity. Because certainly, as was well discussed,
there are plenty of places in the world where you
don't need an air conditioning system even a window unit,
or if you do, you rarely need to employ it,
(03:19):
So maybe you have less of an appreciation for it
in those places. Yeah, I was actually to talk. I
was just out of town for a little while. I
went on a vacation to England and France, and they're
pretty much all the places we stayed in did not
have air conditioning. And it was you know, this was
during September, still pretty warm outside while we were there,
(03:39):
but we just opened the windows up and nice cool
air flows in all all the time. And like, it's
amazing the difference between the difference of opening a window
in Paris versus opening a window in Atlanta on a
summer evening, which is just like, you know, it just
lets the swamp air right in. It doesn't seem to
cool enough. Yeah. Yeah, um places also come to mind, Hawaii,
(04:02):
or at least parts of why you'll you'll find in
a lot of people living happily without an air conditioning
system just because you have a regular, you know, dependable
temperature more you know, year round. But also you get
a nice specific breeze, which is less the case in
a lot of places around the world where you know,
you open a window and it just doesn't seem to
(04:24):
relieve very much, especially if you live in one of
these houses that has not been designed to create cross
breezes and all that, right, houses that have been designed
to depend upon air conditioning. Yeah, so Uh, yeah, we're
gonna pick up more or less where we left out
off then. And so this new invention was impressing people.
People were thinking a lot about how to roll it out.
(04:44):
Industrial buildings and hospitals were some of the first to
jump in their hospitals, not surprising since the hospital plays
into the origin story itself. And then, of course, uh,
you're you're probably wondering, well, who is the first person
to put one of these puppies in their home, because
obviously that's the reality most of us, or a lot
of us anyway, live in Well, Charles Gates, son of
(05:07):
industrialists and uh and gambler John Gates, was the first
to set one up in their home in nineteen fourteen.
And get this, Minneapolis, Minapolis, what not in Florida, not
in Texas or that's strange? Well, hey, I mean because
basically we're looking at a time during which to have
(05:27):
a home air conditioning system was a manner matter of
just pure privilege and in luxury and uh, and that's
not going to be confined by you know, geographic constraints.
But man, in Minneapolis, I mean, how many years, how
many months of the year would that even be useful? Well,
it also makes me wonder how many months the year
could you depend on this thing to work, because because
(05:48):
one of the point, one of the things we're going
to touch on here is how some of these systems
were were a little problematic, so innovations in the nineteen
twenties would make them smaller and more more affordable and
allowed the tech to spread. But as Marcia E. Ackerman
points out in her book Cool Comfort, which is an
excellent book about the UH the History of of air
(06:10):
conditioning UH in the United States, she points out that
in the early twentieth century especially, there were not many
places where an investment in a costly a C system
would give you a return on your investment, except for quote,
huge halls in which multitudes assembled for entertainment. Okay, yeah,
because I mean otherwise it is just a matter you've
(06:31):
got to be this this super rich individual who can
just blow a whole bunch of money on an air
conditioning system. You need something where you're actually going to
be able to make the money back on it. And
of course this leads us inevitably to theaters, and she
points out that there were some early success stories even
before this point, with just traditional theaters such as uh
an eight eight performance by Edwin Booth and yes, uh
(06:55):
related to the other Booth actor really yeah, yeah, they
were brothers, I believe, um, but rather different individuals. And
Edwin Booth, you know, and a famous individual within uh
you know, the acting scenes, certainly of New York City.
So but anyway, there was an eighteen eighty performance by
Edwin Booth on a hundred degree day in New York
(07:16):
City's Madison Square Theater and it was described at the
time by English novelist Mary Duff's hardy um and it's
you know, because she was really impressed with it, and
it's like here you go into this theater and it's
it's sweltering outside and it's cool inside. Because generally, if
you within a time before air conditioning, what happens when
a whole bunch of people gathering in inclosed space to
watch performance. Okay, so that's a teen eighty and that's
(07:38):
before Willis carriers, So they must have been using some
more primitive method to cool the theater there. Yeah, but
there were there were also a lot of failures during
this time and and certainly in the decades to follow.
Getting the early twentieth century, you know, despite the realization
that a C could really turn things around for sweaty
spectator events. Also in the early twentieth century, they were
(07:59):
public health and initiatives to legislate ventilation in places like
this in order to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses
like tuberculosis. So this brings us, of course to the
movie theaters, because it's the movie theater of where we're
going to see the real rollout of air conditioning. You know,
a lot of this was during the Great Depression as well,
(08:19):
you know, a time of of of great economic hardship.
So there would there would have been new a C technology,
but people wouldn't have had a lot of excess income
to spend on installing them in their houses exactly like,
so that the technology is really coming on board, but
there's a very little market for for home use. But
theaters saw a return on their investment by deploying them.
(08:41):
And some think that the air conditioning helped usher in
the golden age of Hollywood. That's really interesting. Now not
to discount all those B movies of the nineteen thirties,
or the newsreels or the shorts, because you know, what
better time than the Great depression to escape into the
realm of cinema while also staying abreast of current events.
But on top of that, it was actually cool inside.
It was dry inside even better right. Uh And this
(09:03):
has also been presented as part of the origin of
the summer movie blockbuster. Okay also makes sense. Yeah. And
if you go on to YouTube or you know related side,
and you look around, you can find some wonderful promos
from this era that heavily advertised the air conditioning. I
found one from nineteen forty nineties advertising the theater as
(09:25):
the coolest place in town. Yeah. I checked out these
links you sent. Oh one of them. It starts with
the line if nature is wonderful, then our air conditioning
system is out of this world hyphenated. Somebody hyphens in
English texts at the time, especially in ads, but also
I in a different article I was reading, I found
a reference to a nineteen twenty six ad for a
(09:46):
movie theater in St. Petersburg, Florida, which said the proud
management had the temperature down so low that ladies in
evening dresses almost froze. Another thing that I noticed about
these ads is uh, some implicating that cool air conditioned
air is somehow clean as opposed to what I guess
(10:07):
like dirty warm air. We talked to the previous part
of the series about why cold water psychologically seems cleaner
than tepid water. Is something similar going on here, like
does it feel like cold air coming out of the
air conditioner? Is is sterile? Is clean somehow? I mean
you can still catch you know, TV being circulated through it.
I'm sure, yeah, yeah, I think. I mean, I guess
(10:30):
it comes down to just the feeling that it is refreshing,
and refreshment is good refreshment, and then we equate that
with health, and you know, we probably buy into some
of these old concepts like the asthma theory to some extent,
even if we're not familiar with the term, Like, there's
a legacy of the kind of of that kind of belief,
and I'm a guilty of it as anyone like I
remember as a kid, like like I would I would
(10:52):
love to just stick my face against the air conditioning though,
and just take in the cold air. I wouldn't do
that with the with the heat, but with the cold air,
it was just this feeling that this was pure, you know,
even though obviously wasn't This is a funny memory. I
remember when I was much younger, during times when I
was having anxiety, Like you know, I was freaking out
(11:13):
about whatever my little mind was freaking out about back then.
But I remember leaning over an air conditioner and breathing
the cold air coming out of the vent somehow was
anxiety relieving to me with a little mask. I did
not have a mask, but yeah, I don't know why
that was, but at any right, this became just part
(11:33):
of the theater offering. And, as Ackerman points out in
her book quote, by promising to do more for comfort
and health than simply move air around, air conditioning reinforce
the novelty, modernity, and luxury of the movie going experience.
This is so interesting because it could be another one
of the many ways that we don't often consider brute
(11:55):
force technological realities influencing media throughout history. You know, we
like to think of movies and books and recorded music
and all that solely as products of the creative process
by the artist. You know, they're just they're creative output.
But these works of art and forms of entertainment are
they're highly influenced by brute facts about the physical conditions
(12:17):
under which they were produced or under which they are
experienced by the audience. And we talked about this in
our Motion Picture episode, Yeah You Want You want to.
You probably prefer the idea that people were just enraptured
by these these cinematic marvels taking place, and not so
much that well, they they're they're groin was just super
sweaty and they're just tired of walking around and swamp pants.
(12:38):
But that's sort of coming at it from the opposite perspective.
I mean, we talked a lot about physical realities influencing
the early days of film from the production side, right,
you know, like about the the standard lengths and you know,
whether they had sound with them and all that, and
that influenced conventions of the genres early on, or the
fact that there was no film editing early on. But
(12:59):
then this is coming at it from the other side,
just like the conditions under which films are shown had
something to do with the business of film in those days,
which ultimately dictated something about what kinds of films were
successful and what kinds of films were made. I mean,
I'm thinking about how if I was just going into
a theater to get out of the heat, and that's
all it was. What would I what? What kind of
(13:21):
movie would I want to see? I might just want
to see whatever movies longest or or indeed, like just
give me a block of stuff. It can be films
that can be sure, it's it gonna be the newsreel.
I'll just set for whatever. Uh just just just show
it to me and let me cool down a little.
So according to the U. S Department of Energy, uh
A C units started making their way into theaters in
(13:41):
the nineteen twenties, and the earliest systems, though, were simply
heating systems that were modified with refrigeration equipment, which managed
to cool the lower seats but left the balcony muggy
and sweltering, and there are even accounts of people on
the lower levels having to wrap their feet in newspaper
paper to stay warm again while people in the balcony
sweated it out. And it wasn't until nineteen two that
(14:04):
Carrier installed the first true theater A C system in
the Metropolitan Theater in Los Angeles, and then the Rivoli
Theater in New York got an updated version in nine
and UH they revol he proudly advertised at the time
that they kept their theater cooled to a constant sixty
nine degrees fahrenheit or twenty six degrees celsius. That is,
(14:27):
I mean, to each their own, But that is too cold. Yeah,
I think once you get lower if you're talking about fahrenheit,
once you get lower than the low seventies, what the
heck are you doing? Yeah, Like, I'm not one to
turn the thermostat in my own house down anywhere near
that low. And and if I go into a place
that is that. I mean. The other thing is like,
you're not going to be dressed for it. I mean,
(14:48):
I'm I think we all have experienced a cold theater before,
so imagined A lot of us know that if you're
going to a movie theater, you bring a hoodie, you
bring a jacket, etcetera. But but I'm imagining these like
people hot on the street looking to get out of
the heat and set down for a couple of hours
and watch the cinema and then uh, and then they
get in there and they're just gonna be like chilled
(15:09):
to the bone right because they're not dressed for it.
They didn't bring blankets with them. It's a it's a
three dog theater experience. Yeah, other theaters would boast that
it was quote twenty degrees cooler inside, which in some
cases was apparently arguable. Though that there were theaters where
people complained about the cold or said they actually became
(15:31):
ill because of the cold. There were even charges of
a c abuse. What does that mean that they were
just just chilling people out too much? Okay, yeah, this
apparently didn't I've been assaulted with an air conditioning unit. Yeah, yeah,
I mean. And also the whole time they're using icicles
and egg luede decorations and the promotion of it. I
saw some wonderful pictures where it is they're just really
(15:52):
driving at home, like come into the winter wonderland off
this theater. And there was apparently a lot of back
and forth, and this Acraman goes into more detail about
it with you know, certain crusaders for warmer theaters, uh,
you know, really getting some pressed. But then but but
the thing is it didn't apparently hurt ticket sales in
any like real meaningful way, and Ackerman points out that
the first drive in movie theater opened in June three
(16:16):
in Camden, New Jersey, and became a major force. Of course,
you know, in the nineteen fifties a major cultural force,
very popular. But their popularity challenges the notion that people
only wanted a chilly movie going experience, uh, which most
cars of the time, or maybe all cars at the time,
we're not air conditioned, right, Yeah, and the generally you're
(16:36):
turning your car off, turning the engine off. You're not
running the a C the whole time, right, It's it's
about watching a film more or less outdoors. And then
it wasn't just movie theaters during the Great Depression. Apparently restaurants, bakeries, libraries,
and museums eventually began uh experimenting with you know, enhanced
air conditioned environments and saw enhanced traffic because of it.
(17:00):
Department stores came into their own as well, and Ackerman
she hilariously describes uh department stores as basically being quote
theaters of things like that. But of course you can't
really charge admission to a department store, so you get
less of a return on an investment that way, and
(17:20):
she mentions like accounts of people who went to the
department store to stay cool and just like went around
trying on dresses they couldn't afford in order to just
to get out of the heat, but not really you know,
you know, spending that much money there. Oh, I don't know.
I mean I can see you get more people into
the store exposed to the merchandise. Would I would find
(17:41):
it hard to believe you don't end up selling more
somehow that way. Yeah, And then I think most I
imagine that, you know, stores are going to to realize that,
you know, maybe they're not going to sell a big,
expensive dress to somebody on their first visit, but then
they're smaller things they can sell. There's uh, you know,
food and drink, et cetera. Maybe what you gotta do
is you gotta pair air can to and interior with
(18:01):
really pushy salespeople. Now, It's also important to note that
while ticket prices and locations made a c movie theaters
especially a great distraction for a lot of people during
these these decades that were discussing here, this was certainly
a part of American life. It was affected by segregation definitely.
Ackerman points out that until the nineteen sixties, overt policies
(18:22):
and local customs made movie theaters far less accessible to
black audiences, especially in the South. We're talking poor seats
alternative viewing times and also just alternative theaters altogether, and
quote movie theaters and ethnically or racially segregated neighborhoods generally
lacked the palatial appertinences, including air conditioning of the big
(18:45):
downtown movie houses. This is another one of those areas
that people might not even think about the legacy of
segregation and racial disparity and access to to you know,
technology is basic access to climate control comfort. Yeah yeah,
all right, Well, on that note, we're gonna take a
quick break, but when we come back, we're going to
continue to look at the impact of air conditioning technology. Alright,
(19:11):
we're back. So the impact of air conditioning technology is huge,
and we can see it in various ways. So on
the individual level, certainly it made it easier and or
more comfortable to live in hotter regions of the earth,
and you know, and on the other hand, it also
meant that the climates that once forced us out socializing
amongst each other, be it at a pond step well
(19:34):
or just from porch to porch in the neighborhood, now
forced us inside either into communal a c environments such
as some of the ones we've discussed uh, you know,
hopefully like a museum or something, or or perhaps a library.
But but it also might just put us in there
in our own individual a c caves cut off from
everyone else, perhaps with that television or that radio. Not
(19:56):
to keep this company, this media socialization, which you know,
remains I think a detrimental aspect of our society to
this day. That's a depressing thought. Yeah, but of course
now our stuff are our technologies mobile, so it's not
even confined via by air conditioning. I do want to
make a quick health note. We mentioned U tuberculosis earlier. Uh,
(20:18):
there are a few different health problems that are associated
with air conditioning, most notably Legionaire's disease caused by the
Legionella bacteria or a few by you know, all varieties
of Legionella bacteria. Uh. And uh, you know it also
can contaminate hot water tanks, hot tubs, and cooling towers.
But contaminating the water in an air conditioning system is
certainly one of the factors. So not to not to
(20:42):
scare everyone about air conditioning, but again it is not
properly maintained. Yes, it is susceptible to this sort of thing. Now,
one of the ways that we already sort of hinted
that there was a legacy to air conditionings in the
way that it made many former adaptive techniques of our cultures,
in our architecture obsolete in some cases, right, Yeah, it
(21:03):
enabled architectural designs that wouldn't have worked as well or
at all in a pre air conditioning world, and this
includes a suburban tract housing. One of the greatest examples, though,
is the advent of steel and glass skyscrapers a C
cool towers of the modern age that without that a
C would not make as much sense. Yeah. There have
(21:24):
even been opinions from architects about the the impact of
air conditioning on sort of the the aesthetic design of
large buildings. I was reading a Chronicle of Higher Education
article that decided a quote from the architect Eli Jacque
Khan in nineteen sixty where con said quote, the period
of individualistic, imaginatively decorated skyscraper towers has ended. All of
(21:47):
this Modern equipment, including the cooling towers for air conditioning systems,
takes space and the logistical area was at the top
of the structure, resulting in a bulky and not too
handsome mass. So he's totally grossed out by the architecture
that results from having to put large air conditioning units
on the roofs of large buildings, which just results in
(22:09):
sort of boxy buildings instead of the beautiful skyscrapers that
he liked and designed. Yeah, you wanted to be like
the sky temple, uh to gozer at the time, you know,
otherwise you're I mean really it really. I think that
does come back to the to the point like what
is the legacy of of of human uh constructed monoliths.
The top of it needs to be the peak of
(22:29):
a mountain. It needs to be a holy place for
the world of of humans meets the world of the gods,
and it doesn't. It just ruins it if you put
an air conditioning system on top of a zigaratte, right right.
But even if you're not a priest of the urban zigaratte,
if you're not obsessed with the design of sky, you know,
skyscrapers like khan Is, I mean, you can definitely see
(22:50):
the way that it affected architecture at a smaller scale. Yeah. Yeah,
when you come down to materials, certainly, even you don't
even have to talk about the giant skyscrapers. There's a
point brought up in a really cool Mental Floss article
Life Before air Conditioning by one miss Selania. I. Somehow
I think that's a moniker. I have to ask to
ask Will about that one. Uh. But this article points
(23:13):
out the caves and underground housings are a natural means
of controlling temperature. But that means that thick brick and
stone construction is a good way to duplicate the same
principle in our constructions. But air conditioning meant that you
didn't have to depend on thick materials like this as much.
Housing could be far cheaper. High ceilings were no longer
(23:35):
as essential to keep things cool. Upper floors were not
just for the evening. You could live in the attic
if you wanted to, because you could. You could just
plug in a superpowered a C and you're good to go.
You could sleep inside during the summer, you know, with
your television burning right next to you right well. I mean,
another way to think about it is that air conditioning
(23:55):
also affected the planning of cities because air conditioning makes
it more feasible for hot climate areas to have high
density housing. You know, so like you can you can
have tall rise apartment buildings in Florida or something, whereas previously,
I mean, trying to imagine that without air conditioning sounds
pretty hot. Yeah. So you're changing the house, you're changing neighborhoods,
(24:18):
you're changing cities, and and just on the level of
an individual house, it's important to note that houses are
not just physical structures. They are social structures. And you
cannot alter the physical domicile without also altering the shape
of life within it. Change the shape of the house,
and you might, you know, think everything's gonna be just
like it was before, but it's it's gonna be a
(24:38):
little different. I think that's a really good point. I mean,
our architecture shapes our lives. Yeah, the rooms were in
determine what kind of things we do in them. Uh.
There's this classic thing like why does everybody end up
in the kitchen at a party. There is some reason
for that, and there's something about kitchens that you know,
people filter in that way. Yeah, they all. Yeah, hopefully
(25:00):
you have some sort of like an island situation in
the kitchen for people to gather around. Uh. Yeah, otherwise
they're just gonna be sitting on the stove or something
that does make me wonder though, And I didn't see
this reflected in any of the sources we're looking at.
But obviously one of the strategies to keep your home
cooler was that you would have the kitchen in another building,
(25:22):
so where would people gather there? Is that that was
more of the age of the sitting room. I guess, yeah,
I guess so. Or I mean, again, we've talked about
outdoor cooking is one way of dealing with the heat. Um,
you know, like the idea of the barbecue tradition or
grilling out that seems to be a thing that people
like to do in the summer. I mean, on one hand,
it's like it's a nice, you know, warm weather outside,
(25:43):
so people hang out outside. But then on the other hand,
it's like you're not having to do your heating up
of the food inside the house, which is great. And furthermore,
you can think about, you know, the the association of
outdoor cooking techniques specifically with hotter climates, like you know,
the barbecue and the grill out. These are common in
(26:04):
the US South, and I think they come from those
hot weather traditions. I wonder how air conditioning has affected
the prevalence or the prominence of the cook out. Well,
it certainly means you can you can duck in and
out right now, speaking of city planning, another aspect of
of all of this is you have all this air
conditioning running in the buildings, It suddenly gives you a
(26:25):
little more license to neglect the maintenance of green spaces
and trees, which, of course they're providing shade finding more
than shade though, I mean, they're they're they're part of
your natural environment. That's why you've seen in many cities,
including our own city there there have been initiatives over
the years to like to make sure that the areas
that have been that have lost their green spaces. Uh there,
(26:46):
you know, you can plant some trees there again and
actually bring these places back to life once more. But
from like a purely air conditioning standpoint, you don't really
need those trees out front. Really they're there, the trees
that are, you know, lining the sidewalk around the skyscraper,
what what purpose are they They're playing here? Just something
you have to clean up after, right. I love that
(27:09):
mentality that sees anything alive as a nuisance. Yeah, Like
and people say, well, you know, it's it's help, it's creating,
helping to create the air you breathe, and like no, no, no,
the air I breathe comes out of event in the wall, right,
those could be parking spaces, parking spaces for God's sake.
So so you know, we haven't gotten into you know,
and we're not going to get into all the details
(27:30):
of air conditionings impact. But hopefully, like so far, we're
able to drive home sort of the ripple effects here
that that really touched on just about every aspect of society. Now,
another one of these ripple effects we've already alluded to,
and that is going to become more and more salient
as time goes on, I believe, is the energy consumption.
(27:52):
And so the energy consumption and the concurrent carbon outputs
created by air conditioning demands. Yeah, absolutely, air conditioning depends
on electricity. And as Lucas Davis of UC Berkeley pointed
out in in the Global Impact of air Conditioning Big
and Getting Bigger, we've seen hot regions of the world
(28:13):
grow hotter, uh and hot regions of the world grow richer.
And as these trends continue, it just adds to the
energy demands of keeping cool. For instance, Uh, they wrote
that more than sixty million air conditioners are sold each
year in China, and again this was when this was
written as as as in a typical window unit uses
(28:34):
ten to twenty times as much electricity as a ceiling fan.
On top of that, they depend on refrigerants that are
potent greenhouse gases. Uh. Davis argues that carbon legislation and
carbon taxing are probably the best way to avoid falling
off the carbon cliff here, even as the technology grows
more energy efficient and you know, better energy sources come
(28:54):
online to aid. But yeah, this is but we often
don't think about just the I mean you probably about
your own energy, uh, you know, costs road concerning air conditioning.
I mean it's it's hard not to when you look
at the power bill for a particularly hot summer month.
But you know, you have to realize that that's happening
in every house, you know, in the in you know,
throughout this city and his other parts of the world
(29:16):
get more of the air conditioning bug themselves, You're just
going to see more of that. Yeah, and uh, and
it's also not just in the houses, but these large
industrial or commercial spaces which I think are a huge
part of the footprint. But yeah, I mean it's it's
one of these binds you're in. I mean, like it's
hard not to to love and appreciate the comfort provided
(29:40):
by air conditioning if you live in a hot climate,
especially in the summer. But another thing that should be
pointed out here when you said a typical window a
C unit, which is probably gonna be using less energy
than like your big central A C unit um uses
ten to twenty times as much electricity as a ceiling fan.
The other side of that is that ceiling fans are
incredibly energy efficient. I mean, you get a really good
(30:02):
bang for your buck in terms of how much cooler
they make you feel compared to how much energy they use.
So another way to think about this is, you know,
if you've got your A C unit, you're trying to
be energy conscious, but also you're like, I don't know
if I can beat the heat in the hottest days
without it. I mean, you know, think about at what
point you can deal with just having the ceiling fan on,
(30:24):
and then at whatever point where you can't hack it anymore, well,
then you know, you go to your A C god.
But if you're a c is like mine. Like sometimes
you reach that point and you're like, I don't think
you can catch up. It's too late. Yeah, I should
have been fighting this battle all day, despite you know,
the problems involved with that. Uh yeah. So, and then
of course you just grow accustomed to air conditioning. I
(30:45):
guess that's the other side of it as well. Well.
I just meant to emphasize ceiling fans. Very good, big
thumbs up to ceiling fans in my opinion. Oh yeah.
And then of course you can flip the switch during
the during the winter and use them to know more
to you know, quite a push warm air back down. Alright,
we're gonna take one more break, but when we come back,
(31:06):
we're going to continue to look at the way air
conditioning changed the world. Alright, we're back. So I guess
we were just going to talk about a couple more
things here about the legacy of air conditioning. We know
that the legacy of air conditioning has been huge, But
(31:26):
I was reading a paper by the American historian Raymond
Arsenal about the impact of air conditioning on the culture
of the American South. Uh. And this paper was originally
published in the Journal of Southern history in nineteen four
it's called the End of the Long Hot Summer. The
air Conditioner and Southern Culture, and Arsenal talks in this
paper about how the air conditioner should be thought of
(31:49):
as one of the biggest factors shaping the evolution of
the American South in the twentieth century. So, on one hand,
he says, well, it created a lot of Uh. It
basically created a lot of economic opportunity where it wasn't before.
Like it drew in immigrants from other places in the
United States to come to the South and work there,
(32:11):
a lot of different kinds of buildings and businesses to
take up route there because buildings could now be air conditioned.
But over this time, the way people viewed air conditioning
transition from quote from a luxury to an amenity to
a necessity where you know, people more and more all
the time think of it as something that's not like
(32:31):
nice to have, but something you've got to have. Yeah. Absolutely.
I mean if today, especially in the United States, you
travel somewhere perhaps abroad, uh and you you find out
that it's it's something that a room is not air conditioned,
or a vehicle it's not air conditioned. Uh. Yeah, and
it feels a bit like like like hearing that there's
gonna be no running water or no, you know, no
toilets or something along along those lines. Yeah, totally. That's
(32:55):
kind of a self fulfilling prophecy, as we've been alluding
to before, because the more are the more we come
to take air conditioning for granted, the more we build
our lives around it and make it harder and harder
to live without it. Yeah, and indeed build out into
places where it would not make sense to live without it.
I mean, for instance, you think like some of these
really hot days we had this summer, uh, and how
(33:17):
they impacted say, say, people living in Phoenix, Arizona. You know.
And it's certainly especially if you're dealing with older individuals.
I mean, there were and are people that are having
to live out on the streets. You know, there becomes
a real concern, a health concern of the high temperatures.
Oh yeah, they like hot days can kill people, they
do all the time. And so air conditioning one of
(33:40):
the things says that you know, air conditioning did in
many ways measurably improved life, Like it cut down on
deaths related to hot weather um. But on the other hand,
he's talking about how a lot of the cultural differences
and traditions that are associated with communities that live in
hot climates, including the American South, are a result of
(34:00):
the hot climate. You know, they're not it's not just incidental.
It's like, you know, like the cookout tradition. You know,
it's a result of the fact that there's hot weather.
And with the introduction of air conditioning, many of the
distinct cultural features that define cultures in hot climates diminish
over time. And so he sort of argues that climate
(34:21):
control has to some extent homogenized the United States as
a culture and reduced to sort of reduced some regional
variations that were derived from differences in temperatures throughout the year. UM.
And if Arsenal is correct in his thesis about the
American South, obviously this effect would not just be an
American phenomenon. Is similar thing could be happening anywhere that
(34:45):
air conditioning pervades hot climates, changing cultural practices and ways
of life along with it. Yeah, it just it basically
changes the equation for from modern living. Yeah. Now we've
talked a little bit about the commercial growth that results
due to air condition technology, especially in hotter regions, say
at the United States in the post war period. But
(35:05):
another thing to think about is that a c ends up,
you know, proving essential in the computer age is a
way to keep these machines from overheating. Oh yeah, I
mean we're filling our living spaces also with these machines
that are dumping a lot of heat constantly. I mean,
I wonder how much how much a computer heats up
(35:25):
a non air conditioned room or a bunch of computers. Yeah,
I'm sure there's some stats on that left of to
look and certainly how how into what extent has changed
over the years. Yeah. Now, there are other strange ways
the legacy of air conditioning could be even more powerful
than it first seems. For example, there are a bunch
of uh, there are a bunch of little threads of
(35:45):
social science research about heat and climate control and various
social outcomes at the broad level that are correlated with
heat and access to air conditioning. For example, I was
reading a September article by Jeff Asher in The New
or Times that examines a bunch of existing data on
the possible or supposed links between weather and crime. Now
(36:08):
when looking at stuff like this, I do want to
avoid something that that that actually Raymond arson Oh talks
about in his article, which is he calls it mono
causal climate, a logical determinism, you know, basically like looking
at the climate or the weather as like the one
cause it causal factor in you know, broad social trends. So, yeah,
you see this from time to time where it's like
(36:30):
hot cultures are like this, old cultures are like this,
U and sometimes there is you know, in specific areas,
there's I think there's more of a case to be made,
like I don't know, when you start talking about spices
and food and some of that comes into you know,
availability of spices as well. Oh. Absolutely, it's it's certainly
got to be the case that there are influences of
climate and temperature on culture. I think that's undeniable. It's
(36:53):
just that you want to avoid what he calls the
mono causal you know, climate alogical determinism where the temperature
or is the cause of social outcomes. Uh So we
would be careful not to do that, but look at
like possible links where where the temperature could be a
factor on broad social outcomes. And one example is the
(37:13):
long running documented link between hot weather and crime, hot
weather and murder rates, for example. Uh So, it seems
to be the case that if you just chart an
American city across a year, you're very likely to see
a pattern where the hotter it is, the more people
get murdered. Asher writes. Quote in Philadelphia, for example, there
were two point six shooting victims per day on average
(37:36):
when it was cold, three point four on pleasant days,
and four point four on hot days. And that's for
a period I think of the mid teens um And
so this really does seem to be related to temperature,
because while the rates of indoor shootings stay mostly the
same throughout the year, the rates of outdoor shootings increase
(37:56):
noticeably the hotter it is interesting. Well, one of the
things that you know about crime, that is, people have
a negativity bias about trends and crime. People always think
things are worse than they've ever been. There's more crime,
there's more violent today in the United States. That that
is not true at all. Violent crime has been dropping
for decades in the United States. Murder rates are at
(38:18):
a you know, multi decade low. Uh So. Uh but
also there's something interesting going on there. You don't want
you certainly don't want to overstate potential causality, But I
wonder if could increased access to air conditioned homes in
the summer partially contribute to decreases in crime over time,
to decreases in violent crime over time, because you know,
(38:40):
if if you're seeing that there is some impact of
like people being outside in hot weather on hot days
with rates of violence, could access to air conditioned interior
interior spaces actually play some role there for some inside
with the television, so then they're they're safer, but then
they feel less safe because they're watching, uh, the murders
(39:03):
that are occurring exaggerated and just chewed upon on the television. Well,
I do think TV TV coverage definitely contributes to that
negativity bias and people's beliefs about crime and things like that,
whatever the actual reasons, you know, whether air conditioning or
climate control or anything has anything to do with it
at all. Uh, it is certainly the case that you know,
(39:24):
violent crime is is at uh, you know, an exceedingly
low point compared to historical trends in the United States.
So don't buy into that it's always worse, you know,
it's worse than it's ever been idea, right of course,
And the other day they're into the spectrums the air
conditioning is is not going to solve all the world's problems. Um,
though there were I did. I did read a few
little snippets here about some granted, I think they were
(39:48):
into all individuals that were part of like the carrier
corporation or other refrigerator companies, refrigerator or air conditioning companies.
They were making like a case that like that we
can do it, this can this about world peace. And
I think the particular argument was not like social but
it was more like, hey, we're arguing we're getting in
all these scuffles over resources, but if we have enough
(40:08):
air conditioning, then we can get all the resources from
all the places and then we won't fight anymore, which
you know has not turned out to be the case. Yeah, yeah,
don't buy into that. Another interesting bit of social science
data that I was looking at about air conditioning is
the same article by Jeff Asher points it out. By
(40:29):
the way, an interesting piece of research by Harvard Kennedy
School Associate professor Joshua Goodman, who found a correlation between
cooler temperatures and increased academic performance. Quote, students scored lower
when they just experienced a hot school year than when
they just experienced a cool school year. But that air
(40:50):
conditioning in schools mostly eliminated the influence of heat on
academic performance. So you have an unusually hot school year
that tends to hurt academic performance if your school is
not air conditioned. Uh. And this sort of just intuitively
makes sense to me. It's like, you know, it's hot weather,
it seems like it's harder to focus on mental tasks
and things like that. Um, but that air conditioning inside
(41:13):
the schools mitigated this effect. Interesting. Yeah, I mean I
every time I pick up my son from school from
his elementary school, Uh, he'll come out and you know
often like hold his hand when walking away from school
doors and his hand will be so cold from the
air conditioning inside. But but yeah, I'm all for it
being there if it you know, it gives them in
(41:34):
the environment they need to learn. And with all these
social science findings, I think we should always be careful
not to read too much into single findings until there's
been a lot of replication and analysis or findings by
others in the field. So I think it's best to
sort of treat these as interesting preliminary findings. I will
I will say this, like, if you're in a cool
environment and you're prepared, you have a greater ability to
(41:55):
regulate your own temperature. You know, you can always put
on a jacket or a hoodie right in a in
an overly air conditioned space, no matter what the you know,
the realities of the energy consumption are there. Likewise, in
a hot space, there's generally only so much you can
take off, and there is an absolute limit to what
you can take off. Uh, you know, the social decorum aside. Right.
(42:18):
But but if either of these findings are on the
right track about like academic performance or crime, I mean,
you wonder in what other ways could temperature and climate
control be changing our society and our culture that you know,
we're not appreciating or haven't been studied numerically in these ways. Yeah.
Another thing to keep in mind is just a different
cultures are also going to have a different relationship with
(42:40):
being cool and being hot, things that have evolved due
to their you know, just their cultural exposure to different
temperatures or sometimes even ideas. I didn't get too far
into this because there's I wasn't encountering a lot of
scholarship about it. But for instance, and we've talked a
little bit about, you know, the rollout of air conditioning
in uh in in in China, and you know, there
(43:01):
are some interesting ideas about like what cold and hot
mean within traditional Chinese medicine, etcetera, and uh, and so
you know that that's one possibility to look at, like
how does how does that play out in the culture
that has certain values historically attached to say warm and
cold air. Oh, I want to know more about what
(43:21):
what are the values? I mean some of it gets
into two to yin and yang and you know and
so forth. UM. But some of the papers I was
finding where I was hesitant really include them because they
were like from the mostly from the seventies and eighties,
and they were dealing with like very rare cases of
people with UM they were experiencing frigi phobia, like a
(43:43):
fear of cold air and an aversion to air conditioned
spaces and uh. And so these papers were tying like
these rare cases in with potentially looking at potentially how
some of these ideas within Chinese culture affected these individuals
and I believe. I believe it was like in China
and Taiwan, and perhaps there was a case in Singapore
(44:03):
they were looking at um. But in in any way,
it's one of those things that I wouldn't want to
certainly wouldn't want to blow it out of proportion because
I think we're talking about very rare cases of people
with with with a with a with a mental illness. Yeah,
but but to what extent that is exasperated by ideas
that are present in a given culture. I mean, I
guess it's open for debate, but I would want to
(44:26):
I would want to read more about that before I
said anything more definitive. But it does serve as it
like an interesting just side example of like, well, here's
an idea of what cold and heat mean. Here's the
way it could, uh, in extreme cases present itself. But
then how does it end up presenting itself in more
in milder cases, you know, and and and more just
sort of uh, you know, ambiently throughout a culture. Another
(44:50):
thing I would think would probably be hugely significant that
we haven't really examined at all is how air conditioning
affects fashion. Yeah, like what what people wear in what
kinds of spaces, what's acceptable to wear? Yeah, I mean
I certainly wouldn't think think of it as much as fashion,
(45:11):
but like I generally prefer to wear a hoodie. Uh
and air conditioning allows me to do that year round,
you know. Climate control allows me to do it year round.
But then artificial climate tends to demand that you do it,
you know, so you generally, you know, if you especially
if you have an office job, you're having to dress
for an artificial environment and then also perhaps for the
(45:32):
environment that exists between the artificial environments that you spend
your time. Our office environment is very strange because you
get um so it's like artificially cold of course in
the summer because it's air condition but then at certain
times of day, if you're by the window, you become
an ant under the magnifying glass and that totally throws
(45:52):
everything off too. Yeah, yeah, this is I don't think
there's any like passive solar design employed here. And then
of course the studios themselves get really hot. Sometimes the
studios here are that sweaty growing you mentioned earlier. Well,
there you have an air conditioning A three partner here. Again,
we weren't able to cover everything in the history of
(46:12):
air conditioning, or certainly with refrigeration, which is at times
intertwined with with the history of air conditioning. But hopefully
we touched on some of the key ideas and perhaps
we've we've presented enough information that will that will, you know,
make you stop and think about the air conditioning that
you use in your life, maybe value it a little
(46:33):
bit more and realize that in many cases you know
it is it is more of a luxury. Um. But
we would love to hear from everyone out there, like
what is your relationship with air conditioning? Have you ever
lived without it? Uh? Particularly have you ever lived without
it in a hot climate? And how you know, what
did you do to manage it. We have already heard
back from some listeners on this, and I'm hopefully we'll
(46:53):
get to roll these out on a listener mail in
the future. Uh yeah. We heard from at least one
listener who grew up in India and who talked about
their experience not even thinking of sweat as a bad
thing the way most Americans do. Yeah, yeah, there's this
kind of American thing to think of, like any any
sweat that is occurring without your consent, is is a travesty,
(47:16):
you know, like like sweat is the thing that that
happens on my terms. Yeah, I admit I I fall
totally into that gid. Like I am cool with being
sweaty if I'm like hanging out outside, you know, or
I'm working outside or something like that. Can't stand being
sweaty if it's like what's the word. It's like if
you're sweaty on your way to work or something, that's
(47:38):
just the worst. Yeah. Well, we've also had lots of
media to really drive this home, right, lots of deodorant
commercials that really just drive home how gross it is
to be sweaty. There's something wrong with your body. Yeah,
I think I used to buy into that more. Now
I'm more of the mind that like like like feeling
sweaty like feels good. Like I think part of that
(48:00):
was from like sweating on my own terms, But then
I did enough of that where I'm like, oh, I'm
not even like really exerting myself, but it's hot out,
I'm sweating. It feels good to sweat. Um So, and
then of course it's you know, you're not going to
you're generally not going to smell bad until later anyway,
like that fresh sweat is not the problem. But I
would also love to hear from anyone about movie theaters.
(48:22):
How cold do you like your movie theater? Um? Are
you one of these people that would prefer to have
to wear a winter coat? Uh? And then Uh, I
know we've heard from some folk. When we talked about
the Tingler on our other show, stuff to Bow Your Mind,
we heard from some people who went to the theater
back in the day. So I would love to hear
from any you know, older members of the listening audience
out there that might be able to chime in about
(48:44):
theaters of old. What was it like going back then
and in the war between the Chili movie theater and
the the outdoor Um? Uh, drive in cinema? Which do
you prefer? Oh, it's got to depend on what you're seeing, right,
that's there. Yeah, there's some films that are more suitable
for the drive in, right. Yeah, let's be movie territory. Yeah,
(49:06):
I saw I think I saw the mcgruber movie at
the drive in. Oh, I guess that. I guess that's
a good one. I've I've only seen I think I've
only seen like classic horror films at the drive in.
Um No. I also saw the Grindhouse Movies at the
drive in. That was fun, the double feature. We are
fortunate enough in Atlanta that we do have we still
(49:26):
have a drive in theater that that folks can go
to all right. In the meantime, if you want to
check out other episodes of Invention, head on over to
invention pot dot com. That is where you'll find it.
If you want to check out our other show, Stuff
to Blow your Mind, that's Stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. And you can find both of these shows
wherever you get your podcasts and wherever you do get
your podcast I just make sure you rate and review us.
(49:47):
Bring all the stars, Bring all the love please uh
huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other
suggest topic for the future, just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at invention pod dot com.
(50:12):
Invention is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
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