
Air conditioning's original purpose was to enable factory processes - pross356
https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/buildings/air-conditioning-wasnt-invented-to-provide-comfort-to-human-beings
======
nslav
I spent a couple summers working at a printer in Massachusetts around
2005-2006 and the first year the shop did not have air conditioning. The paper
came off a large roll at the back of the press which was pulled through from
the front. Part of the process involved sending it through an oven presumably
to set the ink, then it would go over a chilled roller to cool it off again.
On particularly hot and humid days it would be difficult to restart the press
after stopping it as the condensation on the chilled rollers would saturate
the paper and it would immediately rip (referred to as a "tear out") and would
then have to be manually spliced back together with tape. One night we spent
something like 10 hours trying to get the press started up again after
stopping it to change the plates.

Anyway, that's just my story about humidity and printing. The second summer I
worked there they had installed air conditioning and those problems went away.
I'm sure they did it for business reasons and not because they thought it was
cruel to force people to regularly work in 100+ fahrenheit temperatures.

~~~
dan_quixote
In a previous life I worked for a company that made extremely precise tooling
for airplane manufacturing. These things were often upwards of 200ft long and
60ft tall. And they are so precise, that a difference of 5F could make the
steel structures grow enough to be out of spec. Most aerospace factories have
tightly controlled HVAC for this reason. Well, anyway, we installed a set of
tooling in a factory in Japan where the summers can be quite hot. They didn't
have HVAC in the factory and this resulted in a 30F gradient from bottom to
top. This meant that we had to redesign some connections between parts to
progressively account for thermal expansion. This crazy problem would not have
existed had they just had HVAC!

~~~
Hello71
wouldn't it be cheaper to buy a few dozen box fans from the local electronics
store?

~~~
closeparen
Circulation is not cooling.

~~~
foota
Technically, parent says the issues was the temperature gradient, so this may
have helped?

~~~
nix23
Normally, high precision measuring rooms have zero airflow, otherwise have a
constant temperature in the room and on the piece is not possible.

~~~
foota
Sorry, could you clarify? It seems like zero airflow would inhibit a constant
temperature?

~~~
nix23
For example you putt those pieces like 24 hours (depends on thickness) before
measuring in that room, the piece should have from it's core to the edges the
same temperature.

Airflow inhibits a precise measurement, imagine you putt something in that
room that changes the airflow just a bit, so more warm air from the ceiling
hit's one side of the piece.

Always when you try to measure something, no outer energies should interfere
(no temperature change and no force like airflow or even driving cars outside
of the building), it could even be, that the airflow creates vibrations in the
piece, like rolling cars do.

~~~
foota
The issue is that the temperature in the room is non-uniform. The ceiling is
20 degrees hotter than the ground so over time the object will have the same
distribution.

------
chaz
I toured the main FedEx hub in Memphis several years ago. They have many
buildings that sort packages on high-speed machinery.

In one building, there was a long line of parcel trays, each carrying a single
item. The trays would move fast down the line and, at just the right moment,
tip the parcel out and into a bin below, each for a different flight. Because
of the tray's speed (and the trays don't stop), the tipping needed to start
well before it was over the bin, at a precisely calibrated time. A video of
these machines is here, at 1m 45s:
[https://youtu.be/xytmh6t3Grk?t=105](https://youtu.be/xytmh6t3Grk?t=105)

It was one of the few sorting buildings that was air conditioned in the hot
Memphis summers, and not for the humans. The humidity affected how quickly the
parcels slipped off of the tray, and they might end up in the wrong bin.

~~~
NullPrefix
Was wondering why the video quality looked like shit until I realized that
it's a "virtual reality video"

~~~
knodi123
I was wondering why a simple youtube video was making my CPU fans kick into
overdrive, then I realized the same thing.

~~~
Dylan16807
It's just mapping a rectangle to a sphere. I wonder what's wasting the CPU.

------
bcatanzaro
It's interesting that this article didn't talk about the CO2 emissions from
heating the North. My understanding is that we would save emissions if people
would move out of Boston and move to Houston because heating houses is more
carbon intensive than cooling them. The temperature differential is a lot
bigger when heating.

There's something Puritan and not very well considered about viewing air
conditioning as a new-fangled luxury while viewing heating as a necessity.

~~~
lsllc
The north east US is the largest heating oil market in the world, we consume
85% of the heating oil in the US. Most of these oil boilers will be 80%
efficient at best. It does get quite cold here in the winter!

The answer is building codes that require energy efficient construction
techniques, and 0% loans for retrofitting existing houses with better
insulation, windows and heating (actually much of this exists via HEAT loans).
Tax breaks would help here ...

Previously, the only real choices were some sort of fossil fuels with natural
gas being the most efficient and cheapest (although it's only available in
urban and most suburban areas).

These days, a heat pump is more than capable of both heating and cooling even
in the depths of a New England winter (although you still need a heat source
for hot water). However, you need the right sized ducting for this which can
make it cost-prohibitive for a retrofit (but there's no reason why any _new_
house should NOT have a heat-pump).

~~~
gruez
>but there's no reason why any _new_ house should NOT have a heat-pump

Are heatpumps always more economical than gas/oil? I know that natural gas
almost always beats electrical resistive heaters in terms of cost, even though
resistive heaters are more efficient than natural gas. Heatpumps are supposed
to be more efficient than resistive heaters, but in areas with expensive
electricity it still might be more expensive.

~~~
cmurphycode
I was curious about this a while ago and did some napkin math.

Natural gas is roughly $15 for 1 million BTU. There are 3412 BTU in a kwhr, so
if you heated resistively, you'd need 293 kwhr to get 1 million BTU.

In my area, which I feel has pretty high electricity cost, we pay $.24 per
kwhr, so that'd be $70.

Therefore, you need a 70/15 (4.666) COP for your heat pump to match natural
gas by price. My understanding is that that would be an unusually high number
for cold weather conditions.

~~~
lsllc
The State of NH Office of Strategic Initiatives has a nice Fuel Price
comparison page that they keep up to date (and are adjusted according to cost
per MMBTU):

[https://www.nh.gov/osi/energy/energy-nh/fuel-
prices/index.ht...](https://www.nh.gov/osi/energy/energy-nh/fuel-
prices/index.htm)

You can see that as of June 2, measured at $ per MMBTU (million BTU):

    
    
      Natural Gas           $8.31
      Oil                  $17.62
      Propane              $32.93
      Wood pellets         $21.92
      Resistive electric   $48.84
      Air src heat pump    $18.74
    

The fossil fuels are all measured assuming 80% heating efficiency, whereas for
propane or natural gas you might well have a high efficiency unit up to 97%
which gains you a bit more savings.

These prices may vary depending on location and also I think natural gas isn't
that common in NH as it's a mostly rural state.

~~~
cmurphycode
Holy moly. That price per million btu is a lot less than the number I stumbled
across. Makes it even more obvious.

~~~
mindslight
Remember, oil prices cratered over the past few months. I'd take the current
numbers with a grain of salt.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
We also don't know what the long-term fallout is going to be. Natural gas has
been unusually cheap recently because it's a byproduct of fracking for oil.
But low demand for oil means less demand for fracking which mean less natural
gas production.

It's really hard to predict where prices are going to be in a year, because
you really have to predict how well the oil industry can predict future demand
in this environment. If they shut down too much production and then demand
comes back there could be a price spike. If they expect a quick recovery and
are wrong, prices could remain on the floor for a good while.

------
causality0
The headline is not strictly accurate. Putting aside non-mechanical indoor
climate conditioning that dates back thousands of years, in 1842 John Gorrie
used an evaporative cooling machine to create cold air for hospital patients.
Carrier was just the first to use an electrically-driven compressor.

~~~
kortilla
IMO evap isn’t even worthy of consideration when discussed in the context of
the south where you’re dealing with 90+% humidity.

~~~
causality0
By evaporative cooling I mean using controlled phase-change of a cooling
medium in closed-loop condensation/evaporation coils, not something analogous
to a swamp cooler. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

------
csours
I wonder if octovalve/superbottle is coming to home hvac. I spend energy to
make my water hot for showers and washing. I spend energy to make my air cold
so I can work without sweating. I spend energy to chill my groceries.

I can't help but feel that coordinating those better would lead to reduced
energy usage (thus reduced cost). I don't know if I can feasibly do that right
now with residential/consumer tech.

~~~
thebluehawk
That's a compelling idea. I've seen systems that use essentially solar panels
on the roof that heats up a liquid in a loop then goes to a heat exchanger
which heats up your water before it goes to the water heater, thus making it
so the water heater doesn't have to work as hard.

Could we use the exhaust from your fridge, A/C, furnace, etc. to also heat
coolant in a similar system that circulates to your pre-water heater, thus
boosting efficiency. Especially if you can dump the exhaust of your fridge
outside rather than paying to heat up that air, then cool in down again with
your A/C.

The question is if the cost savings would be worth the cost of the system.

~~~
frandroid
The closer you get to the equator, the more you're likely to see these. When I
was visiting Turkey, I didn't notice them in Istanbul because most rooftops
are not visible from the street, but then I visited Safranbolu, a small
tourist town, and there almost every century home had this recently-made
metallic hot water tank on top which completely destroyed the bucolic
architectural character of the town.

One of my uncles here in Canada built a passive system by just putting a giant
1" PVC tube coil on the backside of his roottop to heat up water for the
swimming pool, since the swimmable season is pretty short anyway.

~~~
OkGoDoIt
Not sure if it’s exactly what you’re talking about, but something similar is
pretty common in China as well. I’ve heard people call the system “solar
power“, but what they’re referring to is effectively a tank of water on the
roof that is heated by the sun which is used as the hot water source for
showers, etc.

~~~
xyzzyz
It is very much solar power, it's just not fancy high-tech photovoltaics.

------
nimbius
Anecdotal evidence but my ex boyfriend was an HVAC technician and frequently
serviced suburban households. He was always stunned at how cold most customers
wanted their homes in the summer. "theyre like chubby little eskimos in front
of the TV" he used to chuckle, and most would ardently refuse energy saving
ideas like acclimating to 75 degrees in the home, installing ceiling fans, or
opening windows instead of running the HVAC system. Most people would just run
the system constantly until the blower died or the compressor burned up every
six or seven years.

Summertime is supposed to get a little warm :).

~~~
Grakel
I would like to politely disagree; I think the point of having control of the
temperature in your house is to have it be exactly the way you want it all the
time. Now, it may take a while for the technology to catch up to that, but I
think people would happily install a new system every few years, rather than
lose that control. I personally like it cool enough to wear layers, regardless
of what month it is.

~~~
maerF0x0
The issue is that many people do not realize the range to which they can
acclimatize. And the acclimatization has varying degrees of value depending on
the temperature differential to outdoors.

Eg: in Canada one can keep their home a few degrees cooler in the winter to
save quite a bit of money. Same idea in hotter climates -- keeping it 75
instead of 70 is something one can acclimatize to, but has more value when the
out door temperature is 100f vs 80f.

Overall I think it's just momentum. When I had a nest I used the dynamic range
that said only cool if my place is over 78 and only heat if it's 68.
Everything else, just roll with the ambient.

~~~
londons_explore
> The issue is that many people do not realize the range to which they can
> acclimatize.

Said acclimatization normally comes with downsides... When its hot, one might
be less productive, feel less motivated to get stuff done, etc. It's pretty
hard to measure that cost on a personal basis.

~~~
ksdale
If you feel worse enough to be less productive, have you actually
acclimatized?

I grew up in a house with air conditioning on all the time during the summer
and thought that there was no way I could ever handle indoor temperatures of,
say, 75. Then I spent a couple years in Arizona and wanted to save on AC costs
in the summer, it took a while to get used to, but now an indoor temperature
of 70 in the summer feels very cold to me.

~~~
jdofaz
As a kid in Phoenix my parents forbid setting the thermostat below 80, unless
the humidity outside was low enough we could use the swamp cooler instead of
the air conditioner.

Now I'm comfortable at 78 with a ceiling fan, to me 75 is cold and 70 would be
freezing

------
hinkley
It's odd to me how both this history and the one on Wikipedia seem to keep
industrial refrigeration and industrial air conditioning at arm's length, as
if air conditioning isn't a walk-in cooler scaled up to building size.

30 years before Carrier, Carl von Linde was refrigerating beer for Spaten
Breweries and within 10 years everybody was doing it. It seems like the key
difference is that his chiller was indirect, freezing water instead of
chilling air.

I think I first heard of this on Connections 3, which of course makes these
connections because that's what they do.

------
1996
It's funny (and sad too) how in some parts of the world, AC is frowned upon: I
visited France and Spain, the two sides of the border by the Mediterranean had
about the same temperatures, but AC was a rare oddity in France, while it was
very common in Spain.

It seemed to be due to beliefs, as the locals said they were afraid of getting
sick due to AC -- while I don't disagree improper maintenance can provide
breeding grounds for a bunch of microbes, just do the scheduled maintenance
and everything will be fine!

~~~
f6v
It's also that "it's hot only several days in Summer, why do we need Acs?" and
then year over year Western and Central Europe is suffering from "unexpected"
heat waves. What makes it worse is that residential buildings haven't been
built for this kind of climate.

~~~
altoidaltoid
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave)

14000+ dead in France that year...

------
sand500
99% invisible podcast about AC

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-
delight/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-delight/)

~~~
AnotherGoodName
A much better article since it discusses home design. You really can live
comfortably without AC in even harsh environments. In particular houses with
basements that have airflow through to the rest of the house. Underground the
earth is ~55F the world over and it's really not difficult to design houses to
make use of this fact.

~~~
post_break
All of that is dependent on location. If I dig a basement I'm under water.

------
thisisauserid
I learned that from James Burke on Connections:

[https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x68uf3j](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x68uf3j)

He says it was for treating malaria though.

------
MattGaiser
Yet another misery conquered by technology.

~~~
AceJohnny2
Evil, unholy technology!!!1

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Air](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Air)

~~~
AceJohnny2
> Characters: Doctor Muñoz: A Spanish physician of _" striking intelligence
> and superior blood and breeding"_

I can't believe I glossed over how racist Lovecraft was when I read this in my
teens.

~~~
malwarebytess
Is that racist? Why? Obsessions over bloodlines and breeding have existed even
in homogeneous societies. Not to say Lovecraft wasn't a racist -- he was.

~~~
AceJohnny2
racist/classist... at that level it's the same thing.

And why is your handle a typo away from the respected MalwareBytes name?
(Other than to sow confusion, of course)

------
blakesterz
Funny, being from Buffalo I've always heard it was invented here, and I read
this and it says... Brooklyn?!

In 1902 the factory’s operators asked Willis Haviland Carrier (1876–1950)... I
guess he's FROM Buffalo, but created it FOR the place in Brooklyn. Good to
know the details of this little trivia piece now.

[https://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/blog/the_last_laugh/2011...](https://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/blog/the_last_laugh/2011/07/buffalo-
birthplace-of-air-conditioning.html)

~~~
elicash
Florida also claims credit because of John Gorrie.

In fact, in Congress each state contributes two statues to the National
Statuary Hall Collection. One of Florida's is of John Gorrie -- that's how
much state pride is taken in it.

[https://www.floridainvents.org/john-
gorrie/](https://www.floridainvents.org/john-gorrie/)

------
clintonb
The podcast "50 Things That Made the Modern Economy" has an episode about
this:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0504qtn](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0504qtn).

------
p1mrx
It'd be nice if someone could properly design a dual-hose portable A/C with
attention to soundproofing and efficiency. Lots of people will be needing
these over the next few decades. I recently bought one, and found the low-
hanging fruit to be pretty pathetic:
[https://pmarks.net/ac](https://pmarks.net/ac)

(The ability to wirelessly integrate with a standard thermostat would also be
nice; I'm currently hacking that together using ESP32 modules.)

------
im3w1l
It depends on how you define air conditioning. The story from the article
describes different technologies from the modern AC unit: cold water and
evaporative cooling.

But already the ancient egyptians used evaporative cooling for their homes.

And with an even looser definition, we might include root cellars. They are
also rooms with controlled temperature and humidity, dating even further back
than ancient egypt.

------
peter_d_sherman
>"In 2018 the International Energy Agency predicted a coming “cold crunch”
driven by a combination of three key factors: _Incomes will continue to rise
in the emerging economies, where one of the first spending choices is for a
window A /C unit._"

------
akeck
I thought it was first for watching movies.

[https://wfpl.org/air-conditioning/](https://wfpl.org/air-conditioning/)

------
redis_mlc
AC was first introduced to US subs in WW2 to make the fire control computers
more reliable.

Although more comfortable for crew, they lost bunk space for the AC equipment.

~~~
stx
Its interesting to think that a submarine would require air conditioning with
average ocean temp being pretty cool. I guess it was because of the extra heat
produced by the engine and other machines?

~~~
redis_mlc
Yes, heat, humidity and odors (basically air pollution) are a problem in subs.
Subs are so awful to live in that the crew always gets the best food and
amenities possible, but before AC I think they worked shirtless.

They have layers of insulation for both thermal and acoustic reasons.

Subs and torpedos are interesting to study since navies and inventors really
struggled to make viable models, and probably a higher percentage of sub
pioneers died than in aviation, which is saying something.

------
hk__2
> It’s original purpose was to

Side note: as a non-native speaker I’m always shocked by these basic errors
made by natives, even more when they’re so prominent: here it’s the very first
word of the lead.

Edit: as pointed in the comment the author is not a native. This was a general
remark.

~~~
akuma73
What always confused me was that "its" is meant to denote possession. For
example, I find this to be more consistent.

Bob's purpose vs. It's purpose

For consistency, shouldn't we use: Bobs purpose

~~~
brigandish
What if their name is "Bobs"? You'd have no way to distinguish the name as
names are always going to be the least consistent part of the language - would
you then use "Bobss"? But what if their name is "Bobss"…? ;-)

Funnily enough, if their name was Bobs then the possessive would be _Bobs '_,
but you'll see natives use Bobs's and even say "Bobses" (Gollum like) as it's
confusing even for us. That kind of consistency isn't a strength of the
language, and the education system is failing too many people (that's a whole
other discussion).

~~~
dragonwriter
> Funnily enough, if their name was Bobs then the possessive would be Bobs’

Actually, no; s’ is for possessives of plural nouns ending in s (well, an s or
z _sound_ , which might be an s, x, or z, but usually for a plural will be an
s, and most plurals ending with s won't have it silent, but...); plural nouns
not ending in s or singular nouns, including those ending in s, get ’s.

Except for the special rules for classical and Biblical names, where then the
_number of syllables in the base name_ (which then makes the s or z _sound_
rule more interesting, because names ending with silent s, x, or z are a
thing) becomes relevant because English.

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-
happens-t...](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-happens-to-
names-when-we-make-them-plural-or-possessive)

> as it's confusing even for us.

True, that.

~~~
hnick
I looked into this exact topic a few months ago when a cake decorator friend
wanted to know what to write on the cake board for "name's christening" but
the child's name ended in S. I applaud the attention to detail :)

