
American Summer: Before Air-Conditioning (1998) - georgecmu
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1998/06/22/1998_06_22_144_TNY_LIBRY_000015831?currentPage=all
======
mauvehaus
When I read something like this, the question that springs to mind is whether
it was actually hotter, or whether the norms of dress forced people to dress
less practically and suffer the heat more. It's interesting, because there
seems to be a marked contrast between the daytime (linen suits) and the night
time (people sleeping in their underwear on fire escapes).

To within a rounding error none of the houses in my part of Boston have
central air, and while people complain, nobody is truly miserable when it hits
33/90 and upwards to body temperature. I don't think we've hit 38/100 this
year.

I'll concede that we have better refrigeration, and a diet composed entirely
of iced-tea, freezer pops, and cold bear is a possibility. Still I don't see
anybody wearing a linen suit or a straw hat.

On the other hand, now that some people do have air conditioning, it seems
like it would be dramatically less acceptable for people to sleep out on their
porches or in the nearby park.

~~~
JPKab
I grew up in rural Virginia in a home built in the 20's. We had no air
conditioning, and my father refused to purchase a single window unit because
of the cost of electricity. Our rooms were hot enough that our fish/turtles my
brother and I tried to keep as pets died until we figured out they would have
to be kept in the basement.

Understand that viewing people as miserable in public at a certain temperature
implies that they are outside. Living within a home, especially upstairs, is
TRULY miserable in high humidity at 90 degree plus temperatures. The humidity
seeps into everything. Your bed feels damp, and so does any couch or chair
that isn't made of wood. My friends refused to stay at my house in the summer.
They had AC at home, and they weren't used to sleeping in the heat. My cousin
came from New York with my aunt one time. They left for a hotel rather than
try to stay in our guest rooms.

Fans help immensely, and I doubt fans were widely available for large swaths
of the public in NY in the 20's. In this way, they had it much, much harder
than I did.

One nice thing we had going for us was that our house was designed in a time
where AC didn't exist. Windows were large and placed on opposite sides of
rooms to support cross ventilation. Ceilings were high also, and the walls
were made of plaster, which prevented them from fluctuating with heat load as
rapidly as dry wall.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Even outside . . . when I was a boy, my brothers and I were sent off to scout
camp for a week and a half during the summer. Camp Lanochee in rural mid-
Florida, known to its occupants as Camp Mosquito. I will never forget the
feeling of sweat rolling off me whenever I turned in bed. It was this hot even
though we slept naked or in underclothes only on a cot in an open-sided
adirondack -- under a bug net, of course. It has to have been one of the most
uncomfortable experiences of my life.

~~~
dpeck
I worked on staff at a very similar camp in the southeast for a few summers as
a teenager, taking 2-3 cool showers a day was the norm to get some relief.
Even though staff tents had a 110v outlet that we all had box fans hooked up
to sleep was never very restful, afternoon naps were cherished when possible.

------
jdmitch
_A South African gentleman once told me that New York in August was hotter
than any place he knew in Africa, yet people here dressed for a northern
city._

From my experience this has almost certainly reversed, at least in reference
to places I've lived in East and West Africa, as most men wear 3 piece suits
or at least long trousers and shirts. Meanwhile in America, most people who
work outside or in a non-arctic office will wear as little as they can get
away with.

~~~
agilebyte
Yeah, Central and Eastern Europe has humid continental climate with big
temperature differences between Summer/Winter. In the Summer it is hotter
there than in the UK. Yet, people in the UK (men) have a tendency to go
shirtless when it goes above 20 degrees.

My point? Culture.

~~~
MattBearman
I think we only do that here because it's so rare when it does go over 20
degrees, it's always time for a celebration :)

Having said that, England is currently enjoying one of the best and longest
heat waves we've had in years. I'm just thankful I work from home, most
offices would frown on me showing up for work in just my pants.

~~~
goodcanadian
For American readers, British "pants" means underwear. For British readers,
American "pants" means trousers.

I was once mocked mercilessly by a Brit when I told him I had forgotten my
pants. I, of course, had meant my blue jeans . . . I was wearing shorts.

~~~
agilebyte
I would not mock you, that is a perfectly reasonable way to dress either way
:). As long as something is over your giblets.

------
bernardom
A lot of comments about heat sources in cities.

I learned something interesting yesterday, when I came into work soaked and
complained about how hot Boston's Park Street Station is.

An older (70s) coworker mentioned that when he was young, Boston subway (T)
stations were the place you went to cool down, as they were underground. Once
they added AC to the subway cars, they dumped all their heat... into the
stations. And now they're a furnace.

~~~
twistedpair
They also use dynamic breaking resistors to the convert kinetic energy of the
trains into heat energy. Fans then blow across the resistors to cool them. In
Park Street, this just ads to the inferno. It is at least 120F in there in the
summer. I'll bring in a theromometer one of this summer afternoons.

~~~
tanzam75
> _They also use dynamic breaking resistors to the convert kinetic energy of
> the trains into heat energy. Fans then blow across the resistors to cool
> them._

On subways, the electricity generated by dynamic braking is sent back into the
third rail (or the overhead wiring). It does not get wasted in resistive
grids.

The resistive grids that you're thinking of are used by diesel locomotives,
which do not have a convenient electric grid to dump the electricity into.
Thus, they have to send it out into the atmosphere as heat.

------
jstalin
It's hard to visualize sleeping out on the fire escape in New York City before
heavy car traffic. It must have been _quiet_ at night.

~~~
jpdoctor
You get used to noise is my guess. My dad grew up in New Haven in the 40s
across from a fire house. When he moved out to the suburbs, he had trouble
sleeping at first because it was too quiet.

~~~
cdrxndr
It's only marginally quieter with the windows closed ... and our's are always
open anyways.

Was down in FL on vacation and the wife kept waking up because of the faintest
repeating buzz since it was the only noise.

------
dpcan
While reading this I couldn't help but think that the primary motivation for
inventors, decade upon decade, century upon century, has been to devise
machines and tools to keep us from going outside and being among fellow
humans.

Air-conditioning: A new invention so you don't have to sleep with your
neighbors in the grass at the park across the street when it gets hot.

Something inside me greatly desires a life like that. Where we aren't afraid
of the people around us. Where it would be totally acceptable to throw a
blanket on the ground at the park with my neighbors and enjoy some cool night
air while we all get some rest. Today, I think we'd all get arrested, or
ticketed.

While it sounds miserable to be without A/C, it can be argued that we are even
more miserable now because we have it.

~~~
evan_
> While it sounds miserable to be without A/C, it can be argued that we are
> even more miserable now because we have it.

Speak for yourself. I think that those hundreds of people sleeping outside
where it's just a few degrees cooler would probably have given just about
anything for air conditioning. They weren't doing it because it was fun, they
were sleeping outside because it was the best way they had to try to avoid
dropping dead from heat stroke. That's why A/C is used[1], not to distance you
from your neighbors.

> Something inside me greatly desires a life like that.

You can sleep outside on the ground in a big group any time you want. Most
cities have hundreds of people who do that every day. I think any one of them
would gladly trade it for an air conditioned room with a bed.

[1]
[http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-22/national/36017...](http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-22/national/36017013_1_home-
air-premature-deaths-gas-emissions)

~~~
nutjob123
> You can sleep outside on the ground in a big group any time you want. Most
> cities have hundreds of people who do that every day. I think any one of
> them would gladly trade it for an air conditioned room with a bed.

Most parks I know have rules against entering past dusk, enforced with
ticketing. In NYC there are closed gates which would physically prevent you
from entering many parks.

~~~
evan_
I've only been to NYC a couple times but I remember seeing a lot of homeless
people. I'm sure that there are resources you could use to find out where the
unsheltered homeless population in NYC sleeps, if it isn't in the parks.

~~~
nir
Some sleep in the trees:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/13/nyregion/13trees.html?page...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/13/nyregion/13trees.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

Must be cooler there than on the ground.. Having lived through a few NYC
summers, they can really be the worst. Not only it gets incredibly humid and
hot, there's at least one serious rainstorm each week to drench you. I always
found summer in NYC is much worse than winter.

------
throwaway1979
I believe the AC on casters the author refers to is really a swamp cooler aka
evaporative cooler

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler)

------
_delirium
Interesting; I wouldn't have guessed it made that huge a difference. I spent a
good portion of my childhood in Greece without A/C, and now that it has A/C
it's a pretty incremental quality-of-life change, not some huge revelation (at
least outside Athens, maybe it's worse there). Some people use it (rarely more
than a few hours a day), others prefer open windows, and generally livable
either way. Mainly due to the humidity difference, perhaps?

~~~
pyre
It's definitely the humidity. I was able to bike my 8 mile commute to/from
work while in Portland, OR in the middle of a 100+ F heat wave a couple of
years ago. On the other hand, I'm currently dying in this Toronto heat wave
that's 90F's during the day and 80F's at night. For me the real difference is
the humidity. Portland, is _super_ dry during the summer, and wet during the
fall, winter, and spring.

------
incision
I grew up in the swampy humidity of the DC Metro and didn't live with air-
conditioning until I was 20 or so.

Much like the author describes, we spent a lot of time outside into the
evening/night and at the public pool over the summer. Of course, the existence
of air-conditioning certainly helped and saw me spend a lot of time at the
local library.

To this day, I much prefer to sleep with the windows open than run the air-
conditioning.

~~~
pyre

      > To this day, I much prefer to sleep with
      > the windows open than run the air-conditioning.
    

The problem that I have with this statement is that sometimes just opening the
windows isn't enough. I've lived without A/C since ~2005, and just bought an
A/C unit for the bedroom due to the current Toronto heat wave. It just wasn't
getting cool enough at night even with:

* windows open

* 6 fans running in the house to get air moving

* sleeping without any clothes on

Sleeping still meant being drenched in sweat and waking up multiple times in
the night.

[ At one point in the past we took to sleeping in the basement if it was too
hot, but that's not possible right now. ]

~~~
mdpye
A freezing shower will usually get you 4 hours sleep. Start with the water
tepid, then reduce it over a couple of minutes. If you drop your core temp
then you can get off to sleep, gotta stay under til you're cold throughout.
That's how I dealt with 35 degree (that's 95f) nights after mid 40s days in
the south of Spain with no air con. Also, hard shutters over the windows
during the day, buildings hold on to a lot of heat.

~~~
joonix
I think what needs to be more common is very powerful exhaust fans in
units/homes. I constantly find myself looking for a way to suck out all the
hot air out of my apartment at the end of the day in one fell swoop.

------
zalew
in MENA they had wind towers
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_Tower](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_Tower)
for thousands of years, a free, ecological and efficient system of ventilation
and cooling. Ironically, nowadays they dump megawatts on A/C.

I somehow doubt even
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_Towers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_Towers)
will use wind towers, lol, I hope I'm wrong.

~~~
sp332
Wind towers are much less effective in high humidity, since water doesn't
evaporate very well.

~~~
zalew
possible. still better to reduce those problems architecturally upfront and
attach expensive technology as additional support, than rely on huge-ass
installations running 24/7/365.

~~~
Retric
A well insulated low solar gain building does not need to spend all that much
energy on AC. Especially if people are willing to keep the temperature at 80f
in the summer. The real issue is energy is cheap so people are more than happy
to use it to keep cool. Also nothing prevents you from using geothermal energy
to lower energy costs even further.

~~~
zalew
> A well insulated low solar gain building

office buildings in say, the developped cities on the Arabian Peninsula, are
basically high, very exposed glass and steel cages, where their 4 seasons can
be qualified as: summer, hotter summer, unbearably hot summer and tiny itty
bitty less hot summer.

~~~
sp332
Deserts generally only have 2 seasons: winter and summer. Winters are usually
moderate, and even very cold at night.
[http://www.splendidarabia.com/trekking/ksa_weather/](http://www.splendidarabia.com/trekking/ksa_weather/)

~~~
zalew
I've been to UAE and Oman, both for xmas/ny, I wouldn't call it moderate. when
I had to put up long pants in mid-day to enter the mosque and sadly they
happenned to be jeans (you make this mistake only once), I thought I'd die on
my way from the parking lot. cold nights are typical for desert in the sense
of no civilization open area desert, not cities located on the coastline near
a desert. maybe KSA's Riyadh is different because it's located inland, but
still cities usually hold temperature pretty well, hence 'summer in the city'
tends to be a painful experience during peaks even here in Central Europe.

------
cdrxndr
My wife and I have elected for no A/C in the city for the last 5 years. Pretty
much an experiment in stubbornness, but I'm sure it's also saved real money in
electricity and we're also probably so skinny because of it.

We try to keep a cross-breeze going whenever possible; ceiling and floor fans
are on full blast at all hours; and most recently, I've enjoyed spritzing my
feet with water and lying in front of the fan to cool down.

------
codegeek
"A South African gentleman once told me that New York in August was hotter
than any place he knew in Africa,"

Not sure about Africa since I have not been there yet but definitely it is
comparable to some really hot parts of the world in NYC currently (100 degrees
outside).

~~~
claudius
37 °C is, while hot, not the maximum for Germany and the rest of
central/southern Europe. It tends to be relatively dry, though, especially if
one goes further east (Berlin, e.g.). Given how far north Europe is, I would
expect ‘really hot parts’ to be, well, hotter :)

~~~
revelation
Notice that air conditioning is really rare in Germany; usually only
businesses have them in select locations.

~~~
claudius
I don’t know a single home with air conditioning, even in cars/trains it only
became popular within the past ten years or so.

------
erinbryce
You'd think we'd get used to the heat eventually, but it just keeps on being
miserable...

