IDKMYDE: Alice Parker

Are you familiar with Alice Parker?  She was the genius who invented central heating in 1919, proving that even in a world full of cold shoulders, her ideas could still heat things up. On today’s episode of IDKMYDE we learn that without her, we’d all still be fighting over the last log for the fire.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On today's episode. If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either.
We are bringing that heat literally because I want to
introduce to you someone who doesn't get nearly enough credit,
Alice H. Parker. Don't know her, well you should because
if you enjoyed not freezing your butt off every winter,
she's the reason for it. I didn't know, Maybe you didn't.

(00:22):
I didn't know. Maybe I didn't know. Maybe I didn't know.
I didn't know. I didn't know. Alice Parker was this
brilliant black woman born way back in eighteen ninety five,
so already, you know, life wasn't handing out participation trophies
to folks like her. But Alice looked around at how

(00:43):
people were heating their homes using wood and cold and thought,
this is trash. I mean, imagine chopping wood and freezing
cold weather just so you cannot freeze in your house.
Alice had the genius idea of using natural gas for
central heating. Hey, right, She basically said, what do we
stopped pretending we're on the Oregon Trail and brought some

(01:06):
twentieth century energy to the situation. How about that? Anybody
in agreement with that? And she didn't just dream it up.
She didn't just talk about it. She patented the design
in nineteen nineteen. That's like inventing wildfire before anybody had
ever seen a computer. And be clear, her design wasn't perfect,
it wasn't what we used today, but it was revolutionary.
It laid the groundwork for modern central heating systems. Without Alice,

(01:29):
a lot of us will still be huddled up around
space heaters arguing about who gets to stand the closest
or them kerosene heaters and go to school smell like
Pumpy Levin And let's be real, there's only so many
toes you can lose the frostbite before you start saying,
maybe there's a better way, y'all. Now here's the kicker.
Why don't we know her name? Why are you today,
years old, just finding out about Alice Parker And she

(01:51):
did this over one hundred years ago, barely a footnote
in history. Meanwhile, Thomas Edison farts out of light bulb
and we all act like he invented the sun and
he didn't even invent the light bulb. But that's a
whole nother conversation for a whole another episode. It's wild
how black women like Alice were out here quietly saving
the world while getting none of the credit. But her

(02:13):
story should inspire us. She didn't let the fact that
she was a black woman in nineteen nineteen, when the
world wasn't exactly rooting for her stop her. She had
an idea and she made it happen. So the next
time you cozy in your warm house, remember Alice Parker.
She's the reason you're not out chopping wood like a lumberjack.
And if that's not worth a round of applause, or

(02:33):
at least a thermostat adjustment in her honor, I don't
know what it is. Thank you, Alice Parker, for making
winter survivable and for proven that sometimes the warmest ideas
come from the coldest challenges. And I didn't know. Maybe
you didn't either, I didn't know.