Book Post : 23
Book Name : Cool : How Air Conditioning changed everything
Author : Salvatore Basile
How I came to read it : With my recent career change to energy efficiency in buildings I wanted to read books about Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning. A quick google search lead me to this book and I obtained it by making an Inter Library Loan request from the Okanagan Regional Library. Also the recent heatwaves in Canada resulting in a huge surge in demand for home ACs played a factor.
Did I like it? : This was a decent read. Not overly exciting and at the same not too bland it was an okay read. It gets a bit repetitive in the middle but slowly pics up pace at the end.
Top 10 things I learned from this book:
1. The first proper Air Conditioning unit was invented by Willis Haviland Carrier in 1902. Yes the same Carrier which is a huge AC manufacturing company now. The first AC was built for a company called Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographic and Publishing company. The summers of 1900 and 1902 were very hot and humid and a large amount of paper stock was ruined because of it. So an Air Conditioning system was built for them by Willis Carrier (while working for Buffalo Forge) which not only kept the facility cool but also kept the humidity under control.
2. Willis Carrier mentioned that when the problem of the above publishing company was assigned to him to solve he did not even know what Air Humidity was. Imagine Carrier, who is almost regarded as the father of AC, not knowing what Air humidity was. This only reinforces the fact that it doesn't matter if you don't know something, what matters is how you move from that point. Another modern example of this would be Elon Musk who knew nothing about Rockets. Now he has started off a revival of interest in space with his company SpaceX.
3. In 1922 it was Willis Carrier again who invented the first centrifugal compressor, a very important piece in every modern AC system.
4. The first Air Conditioned plane was the Boeing 247 operated by United Air Lines. It started operation in 1934 and was the first 24 hr coast to coast flight.
5. The first Air Conditioned skyscraper was the Milam building in San Antonia, Texas. For the first time 21 stories of office space were Air conditioned, a remarkable achievement at that time. It was Carrier who installed this system. This was in 1928.
6. Fun Fact: When the 103 floor Empire State Building was built in 1931 it was the World's tallest building and it had no Air Conditioning. None at all.
7. There was a time when theatres did not have ACs and watching a play in the summers was known to be a tough ordeal. People falling unconscious because of the heat was a common recurrence. This is the reason theatres were one of the earliest adopters of methods to try to cool the air.
8. In those days (1800s and early 1900s) people believed that heat is something that is nature's way and it shouldn't be messed with. It took a lot of convincing by the early pioneers of ACs to change that view. ACs sort of had a 'Personal computer moment' in the early 1900s when most people believed that a personal home AC system is not needed and what use could an AC actually have for a small home. The 1950s changed all that and ACs were soon a rage.
9. In 1911, Willis Carrier published a paper called the 'Rational Psychrometric Formulae' at a meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. This is regarded as the most significant document prepared in Air Conditioning. It presented the correlation between temperature and humidity. Engineering students still learn those formulae and I did too when I was doing my Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering. '
10. A textile Engineer from North Carolina, Stuart Cramer was the first person to coin the term 'Air Conditioning'
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