After Cooling: On Freon, global warming, and the terrible cost of comfort || 10 things I learned from this book.

Book Post : 27

Book Name : After Cooling: On Freon, global warming, and the terrible cost of comfort

Author : Eric Dean Wilson

Genre : Non-Fiction/Environment

What is it about?: After Cooling, written by Eric Dean Wilson, is at its core about the history of Air conditioning and how life on earth was almost at the verge of destruction at one point due to the effects of refrigerants. It traces the journey of the refrigerants from its invention to their observed effects on the ozone layer and the reaction of humans to the crisis.  

How I came to read it : I was in the library to pick up another book when I noticed this book. I picked it up because air conditioning always interests me. After reading a book on the same subject last year I wanted to see what this book will add to it. 

   

Did I like it? : Overall this was an average read for me. Maybe I didn't find what I expected from it. I was tempted to stop reading it in the middle because there was another book waiting for me but I continued and I am glad that I did that. It gets more interesting in the later half. A simple description of this book is to say that its a history of refrigerants esp. Freon but that would be only a partial truth. It is much more than that. This was the first book that I read which made a connection between air conditioning and people of color. The author, on numerous occasions, makes it a point to mention how people of color were affected or left out of all the progress in human comfort that was taking place. I did not find this perspective in any other book that I read on the same subject.

There are also a lot of meditative passages on how to live meaningfully and morally in a world where it is increasingly becoming difficult to live without ACs, which we know are not without their faults. In British Columbia, where I live, last summer temperatures were unusually high and sparked a wild rush for ACs. My friend wanted to buy a fan and we both went in search of one in the supermarkets and to my surprise everything was sold out. That incident was running in my mind while reading this book. This rumination by the author on human comfort and the human response to it reminded me of a line from a different book I was reading at the same time. In that book, the author describing another medieval age author says about him ''in his hands a history of walking sticks becomes an essay on aging''. This book starts off as a history of Freon but it is much more. 

10 things I learned from this book (of the many):

1.  Ill start off with a quote from the book; ''The closest we've come to the destruction of all life on Earth is not by nuclear holocaust. It's not by bombing. It's not by deliberate explosion, not by intention at all. It's not by natural forces, either, not by plague, not by famine, not by earthquake, eruption, or erosion-certainly not by meteorite, which long ago ended the nonavian dinosaurs.'' The close we've came to destruction of life was when, because of our rampant release of refrigerants (CFCs) used for Air Conditioning, created a huge hole the size of North America in the ozone layer. Without the ozone layer life on earth is not possible. We did manage to end the production of CFCs before the damage was irreversible thus saving ourselves. 

2. Carbon dioxide(CO2) traps heat. This is part of the Greenhouse gas effect and is an essential part of Earth's process of maintaining a stable atmosphere. But CFCs which were/are refrigerants in Air Conditioning trap more than 10,000 times the heat trapped by CO2.  CFC-12 has a Global Warming potential of 10, 200. 

3. We owe our control of humidity to three people : Alfred Wolff, Willis Haviland Carrier and Stuart Cramer.

4. There was time when people opposed ventilation. There was a group called the Open Air Crusaders who believed that the whole ventilation industry is a scam. They believed that closed windows would lead to diseases and called for Fresh Air in buildings. 

5. Story time: Carrier designed a new AC system for a theatre in New York and planned to use a safe imported refrigerant, Dielene, from Germany in it. However the strict New York City building code did not have it listed as an approved refrigerant.  Carrier applied for a special permit but it was refused by the city's safety chief. The primary reason was that the safety chief was not convinced of its safety. Carrier's multiple attempts to get it approved failed. Now an angry Carrier simply walked into the office of the safety chief's office, poured a splash of liquid dielene into a jar, set it on the desk, lit a match and threw into the liquid. The match continued to burn in the liquid but there was no explosion. Carrier made his point but was shown out of the office immediately. After much back and forth negotiations later the safety chief finally gave the permit but with new safety precautions added.  

6. The person who invented Freon is also the person who invented leaded gasoline giving him the dubious reputation of inventing two of the things that had the most negative impact on the Atmosphere. This was Thomas Midgley Jr. To me his story sounds a tad bit sad. Here was a brilliant inventor who was creative and quite obviously was a genius. It was not his intention to destroy the atmosphere but who knew his inventions will turn out the way they did. His Wikipedia page makes for both inspiring and sad reading esp. the Legacy section.   

7. Story time: Early internal combustion engines commonly made loud sound which came to be called 'knocks'. Nobody knew what caused it and how to stop it. Then the problem was handed over to Thomas Midgley Jr to solve. He was just twenty something then. Working with his boss, he figured out that the fuel was not vaporizing quickly leading to knocks. They needed to figure out how could they get it to heat more quickly. They thought that maybe if they added the color red, which due to its wavelength, enabled absorption of more heat, to the fuel then the problem will be solved. This method sounds unscientific but they tried it anyway. They went to get some red dye only to see they were out of stock so they took the closest thing: a dark purple iodine. They added this iodine to the fuel and surprisingly the knock stopped. This was one of those one-in-a-million odds of history. 

 

8. The story of creation of CFC-12 is extremely interesting and again had one in a million odds of success. Its too long to recount here but is worth reading. In case you pick up this book go to page 140 and start from chapter 3. 

9. In another irony of life in a never ending list, Midgley contracted Polio in his 50s, the same disease which Midgely helped eliminate from United States by inventing Freon which would help keep the Vaccine cool and thus effective.  

10. It was F Sherwood Rowland and his student Mario Molina who first raised the alarm about the effect of CFCs on the atmosphere. Both of them along with Paul Crutzen won the 1995 Nobel for chemistry for explaining how the ozone layer is formed and decomposed through chemical processes in the atmosphere.

10 things I learned from the book | Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world

Book Post : 26

Book Name : Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world

Author : Jack Weatherford

Genre : Non-Fiction/History

What is it about?: It is, as the name says, about Genghis Khan the founder of the Mongol Empire who lived from 1162 AD to 1227 AD. Mongol empire became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death. This book recounts the life story of the khan from his birth through his childhood and how he ultimately became the great khan. And it continues after his death to his descendants who became some of the most influential kings in their own right. And most importantly this book covers the contributions of the Mongols in the making of the modern world. They contributed a lot and the world would have been much different if their contributions are taken out. Read below to find out some of those. contributions. 

How I came to read it : I was reading another book on the crusades when there was a passing mention of the Mongols and the terror they created in the people then. This piqued my interest and I picked up this book from my local library branch.  

   

Did I like it? : Yes, this book is a good read. The author moves the narrative fluidly and quickly with interesting anecdotes thrown in now and then. There are no boring passages in this book. There is a lot of information about how the history of the Mongols was uncovered and the many sacrifices the scholars had to make to obtain the information and preserve the history. Genghis Khan was such an influential figure that hundreds of years later establishments were still fearful what free information about his life and times can do to people so the Soviets kept much of his info under wraps. The ending of the book is very poignant. 

For me this book was an eye opener. Fed by the memes and the false information floating around the internet I had very different views of the Mongols and Genghis Khan. This changed all of that. The Mongols were not what we view them today as savages and primitive people who knew only to fight. They were much more than that.  

Top 10 things I learned from this book:

1.  The first and foremost point that I would like to get out of the way before we move onto other points is that Genghis Khan was not a Muslim. With a lot of Islamophobic sentiment around the world these days Genghis Khan is viewed as another savage king in a long list of brutal Muslim kings(which again is a subject of an entirely different and complex discussion so Ill skip that for now). But the great khan was not Muslim. The word 'Khan' is a common Muslim surname in the subcontinent but it actually is derived from the historic title 'Khan' meaning a military chief or ruler. It originated in central Asia/Europe. Genghis Khan was shamanist. 

2. Genghis Khan is considered to be the one of the greatest generals the world has ever seen and he is considered to have perfected the art of siege warfare to such an extent that he ended the era of walled cities. 

3. In 20 years, the Mongol army conquered more lands than the Romans had done in 400 years. This tells us the Mongol military tactics and the later administration of the conquered lands was very effective. 

4. One of Genghis Khan's greatest achievement was the creation of a new world order. Before him there were pockets of civilizations in the world and they knew nothing of each other. For example, there were no connections between China and Europe. By the time of his death, Genghis connected them with diplomatic and commercial contacts which survive till day. 

5. Mongols are known to have created the first International Postal system. 

6. He granted religious freedom to all people under his realms. In this Mongols were doing much better than Europe where people were butchering each other over religious differences. 

7. Mongols are considered Civilization's ''unrivaled cultural carriers''. As the author states, Mongols ''made no technological breakthroughs, founded no new religions, wrote few books or dramas, and gave the world no new crops or methods of agriculture. Their own craftsmen could not weave cloth, cast metal, make pottery, painted no pictures, and built no buildings. Yet, as their army conquered culture after culture, they collected and passed all of these skills from one civilization to the next. The Mongols deliberately opened the world to a new commerce not only in goods, but also in ideas and knowledge.''

8. The Mongols sponsored the most extensive maps ever assembled. 

9. Europe was heavily influenced by Mongol rule. ''In nearly every country touched by the Mongols, the initial destruction and shock of conquest by an unknown and barbaric tribe yielded quickly to an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and improved civilization. In Europe, the Mongols slaughtered the aristocratic knighthood of the continent, but, disappointed with the general poverty of the area compared with the Chinese and Muslim countries, turned away and did not bother to conquer the cities, loot the countries or incorporate them into the expanding empire. In the end, Europe suffered the least yet acquired all the advantages of contact through merchants such as the Polo family of Venice and envoys exchanged between the Mongol khans and the popes and kings of Europe. Seemingly every aspect of European life—technology, warfare, clothing, commerce, food, art, literature, and music—changed during the Renaissance as a result of the Mongol influence. In addition to new forms of fighting, new machines, and new foods, even the most mundane aspects of daily life changed as the Europeans switched to Mongol fabrics, wearing pants and jackets instead of tunics and robes.''

10. The word ''hurray'' is derived from the Mongols. It was a Mongol exclamation for bravado and mutual encouragement.  

There is much more to be written but Ill limit myself to these 10 fascinating points. Read the book for more! 

Top 5 books I read in 2021

 These are the best books I read in 2021. 

Links to my posts about them below:

1. A Brief History of Creation

2. Simply Electrifying 

3. The Battery

4. Cool: How Air Conditioning changed everything

Phenomena (1985) : Another of Dario Argento's classics.

I recently watched Dario Argento's 1985 Italian horror movie 'Phenomena'. After watching 'Suspiria' by the same director, which became one of my favorite horror movies ever, I am slowly checking off all of his movies. Dario has a unique style of horror. Something about it reminds me of gothic horror short stories. Phenomena is a story of a girl who realises she possesses a sixth sense of communicating with insects and uses this ability to track down a serial killer on the loose. If Suspiria created a sense of dread with exquisite, claustrophobic set pieces then Phenomena does the same with wide open spaces. Set in Switzerland, the stunning locations and pretty towns are shown in an eerie light. Especially the bit about the ever blowing wind. And as always the soundtrack by Goblin is perfect for the theme. The combination of Dario Argento and Goblin has to be one of the best in the industry. This was my third movie of Dario Argento and I am now a 'pakka' fan.

Mary Shelley : One of the women in history that I admire the most

Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, is one of the women in history that I admire the most. She is often credited with creating the genre of science fiction as we know it today. The story of how this masterpiece came about is legendary.

In 1815, Lord Byron, PB Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Polidori gathered together to spend some days in a hotel in Geneva, Switzerland. How these famous got together for a trip is altogether another story. To spend their time, Lord Byron suggested a competition to see who can come up with the best ghost story. This simple weekend challenge resulted in the renaissance of two separate genres, science fiction and horror. Mary Shelley came out with the groundbreaking Frankenstein and John Polidori with The Vampyre, which strongly influence Bram Stoker's Dracula. This whole story itself has a gothic quality to it and ranks up there with all my other favorite horror stories.

To be in the company of such great people and then trump them all with a book that has cemented its place in human history is no mean achievement esp. for a girl who was just 19 at that time. She was largely overshadowed in her lifetime by her more famous husband PB Shelley but over the years she has been recognized as a major figure in the romantic movement of that era.

10 things I learned from the book | Built: The hidden stories behind our structures

Book Post : 25

Book Name : Built : The hidden stories behind our structures

Author : Roma Agrawal

Genre : Non-Fiction/Engineering

What is it about?: 'Built', written by Indian-born engineer Roma Agrawal, is about how structures are built and the engineering that goes behind it. Each chapter she focuses on one aspect of the process. There are chapters on forces, fire, materials, water etc. Roma is, as she mentions multiple times in the book, a nerd when it comes to engineering.  Accordingly she goes back in history, looks at concepts which we wouldn't normally think about, visits places just to take a look at the buildings in person and strokes the concrete wherever she goes. All the while she takes us along on her journey. She talks about how humans have tunneled through mountains, bridged mighty rivers, built sky hugging buildings, built sewage systems to support populations of millions and many other feats. 

How I came to read it : Found this book while randomly scrolling through the library shelves. 

   

Did I like it? : Yes, absolutely. This is one of the finest books on engineering I have read. Roma makes it an easy read. There are no complicated descriptions or math anywhere though personally I wouldn't mind if they were included. The love Roma has for her subject can be clearly seen. And best part is she looks at the past to explain many of the themes she explores. Ranging from the Persians, Romans and Harappans she visits many famous builders of the past. I am a fan of history so this was something that I loved. There are also many personal anecdotes which gives the book a nice personal touch. In places where she is explaining any concepts there are hand drawn illustrations which gives the feeling of being present in a classroom. She almost takes a teacher like stance while explaining some of the concepts adding to the classroom feeling. 

Top 10 things I learned from this book:

1. There are 3 ways in which wind can affect a structure. One, wind can topple a structure if its light. Two, wind can cause a building to sink into the ground if the ground is weak. Third, wind can make a structure sway like a boat rocking at sea.

2. The Romans were master builders. They had a very good understanding of the concepts involved in building big structures. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio who was born in 80 BC is sometimes called the 'the first architect'. He wrote a hugely influential ten volume treatise on the design of structures called De Architectura.

 3.  Emily Warren Roebling was engineer who worked on the building of Brooklyn Bridge in the 1870s. In a profession dominated by men she made a mark for herself. Her husband was the Chief Engineer of the project but got bed ridden when he developed the Caisson's disease during the construction. She served as the liaison and supervisor of the construction communicating between her husband and the on site personnel. But slowly over the duration of the project she took on a more authoritative role and influenced many decisions. She was technically brilliant and was held in high esteem by all who worked with her. 

4. Every building has a core. It can be a concrete core or a steel core. A core is at the centre of the building and is usually well hidden. They usually house essential services like elevators, stairs, ventilation ducts etc. 

5. Taipei 101, which was at one time the tallest building in the world has a massive pendulum housed in some of its top floors. Weighing a massive 660 tonnes, it is the heaviest pendulum in a skyscraper anywhere in the world. The purpose of this ball is to damp the vibrations produced in the building during earthquakes or high winds. It absorbs the energy created by the movement of the building and avoids resonance. In August 2015 Taiwan was stuck by a typhoon which had winds blowing at around 170 km/h but Taipei 101 was unaffected because of the pendulum which recorded movement up to 1 m, which is its largest movement ever recorded.  

6. Fazlur Khan, a structural engineer from Dhaka, Bangladesh came up with the brilliant innovation of putting a building's stability system on the outside. Kahn created a external skeleton using large prieces of diagonal bracing to form triangles. This system is called Tubular system and it has been used in many famous buildings around the world including in Burj Khalifa which uses a variation of Fazlur's innovation. He is called the 'father of tubular designs for skyscrapers'. 

7. There is mention of one of my famous engineers, Isambard Kingdom Brunel (I like him for his inventions in the areas of railways and ships). He played an important part in building the tunnel below the river Thames (1825 to 1843). His father Marc Brunel was the Chief Engineer on this project. Marc invented the first tunneling shield which was an ingenious invention. He was inspired by the actions of a ship worm called Teredo Navalis. This worm, with the help of its horns on the top of its head, powdered the wood in front of it and ate it ast it moved forward. It then excreted this digested mixture behind it, which lined the tunnel it just created, shoring it up. This created a strong passageway behind it as it moved forward. 

8. When did humans started building sky scrapers? What happened that allowed us to build those tall structures? The answer to this question is Henry Bessemer. Before Henry we did not have materials strong enough to withstand both compression and tension. The materials used earlier like bricks and mortar are good in compression but not in tensions (when pulled apart). Steel, which is simply Iron with 0.2% Carbon content, was perfect. It was good at both compression and tension. But at that time it was very expensive to manufacture. Henry Bessemer, in 1856, solved this problem with his use of a closed furnace with warm air running through it. His method was a huge step and mass manufacture of steel started off. This lead to massive expansion of the railway networks and humans started to build skyscrapers. 

9. The idea of reinforcing concrete with metal started with a man who was fed up of his clay pots cracking up. Joseph Monier, a French gardener in the 1860s was frustrated seeing his clay pots constantly cracking so he tried making them with concrete. Those cracked too. He then randomly added a metal grill to the concrete. This solved the problem. Metals are good in tension, concrete is not. By combining these two materials Monier created a perfect combo. Steel reinforcement is a common way of building today. 

10. Romans built the world's first apartment buildings. These were called Insulae and sometimes they reached 10 storeys tall which was a first at that time. By AD 300 the majority of Rome's population lived in Insulae which numbered over 45,000 in the city whereas normal single family homes were around 2000. 

There are many more interesting concepts and facts in the book. Read it to find out more! 

10 things I learned from the book || The Battery : How portable power sparked a technological revolution

Book Post : 24

Book Name : The Battery : How portable power sparked a technological revolution

Author : Henry Schlesinger

Genre : Non-Fiction/Science

What is it about?: It is about the history of how batteries were developed over the years. From the twitching of a frog's leg to the the nickel hydrogen batteries in the Hubble space telescope the book traces the many observations, discoveries, inventions and break throughs that lead to the batteries that we see in everyday use today. 

How I came to read it : I like to casually browse books in a library and on one such visit I saw this book and given my background in energy I had to read it. 

   

Did I like it? :  Yes I did. It starts off nicely, becomes a tad bit bland in the middle but becomes interesting once again as the military uses of batteries section comes up. I learnt a lot of new facts and trivia about batteries and the equipment they power.  

Top 10 things I learned from this book: 

1. We all the know the 'Bazooka', the rocket launcher which can be fired from the shoulder. It forms a quintessential part of so many action movies. The original bazooka was ignited by two standard sized D cells on the stock though later models eliminated the batteries altogether. Fun fact: The name 'Bazooka' was given by soldiers, after a musical instrument played by a radio comic called Bob Burns. 

2. Its not perfectly clear who invented the Walkie Talkie and is credited to many inventors including the engineering team at Motorola. I will only mention the Canadian connection here. Donald Hings, working at the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company in Vancouver is said to have the invented a portable 2 way radio in 1937. 

3. Duracell was originally called P R Mallory company and it started off by manufacturing Mercury cells. This was the first new battery chemistry in over a century(better than the carbon-zinc config used in the majority of applications then). This was in the 1920s.  Sam Ruben was the one who invented the Mercury Cells. 

4. There is a law called Faraday's Law of Electrolysis which states that in order to double the output of any battery, the amount of material in that battery must be doubled. The battery industry hit this wall many times and found ways around it. 

5. World's first electric watch was released in 1957 by a company called Hamilton(this company was eventually taken over by Swatch). This electric watch was called Hamilton 500 and was priced at $175(around $1,300 today). It had a $1.75 energizer battery which was not too reliable. Elvis Presley bought a Hamilton Electric watch and so did Rod Sterling, the host of Twilight Zone. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones wore Hamilton Electrics in the 'Men in Black' movies. 

6. Sonotone Corporation, a manufacturer of hearing aids became the first company in 1952 to offer a consumer product using transistors. Transistors were mostly used in military applications till then. AT&T provided the license to Sonotone for the use of transistors. Interestingly the license provided to Sonotone was royalty free in observance of Alexander Graham Bell's devotion to the deaf. AT&T was established by Bell and his father in law. 

7. TR-55, a transistorized radio model was released by a then young 10 year old company called the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Company. TR-55 was only available in Japan. The company wanted to release its next model TR-63 in the US too. For the exports the company changed its name to something that Americans can easily pronounce: Sony. TR-63 was a huge hit which ultimately popularized the pocket radios.  

8. This one is more of a fun fact. Its common that technical advances attract conspiracy theories. We are living in the age of misinformation so we are pretty used to this but the world was not short of conspiracies in the 50s too. One of these theories said that transistors were a product of reverse engineering alien technology salvaged from a crashed alien spaceship.

9.  In 1973, Sharp released a pocket calculator called Elsi Mate EL-805. It housed 5 Integrated Circuits and was less than an inch thick. It could run for 100 hours on a single AA battery. This power consumption was 1/9000 of other battery powered calculators on the market. This was chiefly because this calculator used LCD(Liquid Crystal Displays) for the first time ever. This was a big turning point. 

10. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, had six 125 pound rechargeable nickel hydrogen batteries. Scientists and engineers at that time estimated their life expectancy to be around 5 years. They lasted for 19 years!