The whole concept of air conditioning was planned before the machine itself was created, allowing a machine that would provide the cooling effect desired. The first attempt to ever make air conditioning unit was made by Dr.John Gorrie (1803-1855) an American physician from Apalachicola in Florida. During work within his practice he created an ice-making machine that simply blew air over cold ice in hospital rooms for all of his patients that suffered from both malaria and yellow fever.
In 1881, when President James Garfield was dying, his naval engineers built a box-shaped structure that contained clothes that were saturated with melted ice water when a fan blew hot air overhead. This contraption by the naval officers kept the overall temperature of his room lower by about 20 degrees Fahrenheit but consumed an impressive half a million pounds of ice within a mere two months.
A close ancestor to the modern air conditioner components was first made in 1902 by an American engineer by the name of Willis Carrier. The machine at the time was not known as air conditioning like it is today but known as 'Apparatus for Treating Hair' and was built especially for a company in New York, called Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing and Publishing Co. Coils that were chilled were used in the machine to cool the air around and lower humidity by about 55 percent. Although the machine was so precise that customers were able to adjust the humidity level to that desired.
After the first invention by Carrier the air conditions began to bloom and become popular, they first became available in buildings in the industry such as printing plants, textile mills and even some hospitals. The first ever house with air-conditioning was that of Charles Gates, son of John Gates in 1914. However these units were considered dangerous as the toxic ammonia that was used as a coolant.
By 1922 Carries had several breakthroughs surrounding his invention; he replaced the toxic ammonia with a benign coolant known as dielene and added a central compressor to make the unit much smaller. The next advance for his company was when he sold his invention to movie theatres with his debut in 1925 in the Rivoli on Broadway. In a short amount of time they began to be purchased everywhere in buildings, department stores and railroad cars.
After World War 2, window unit air conditioners appeared with sales growing from 74,000 in 1948 to 1,045,000 by 1953. Today, the invention of air conditioning is a difficult device to imagine living without in some of the hottest parts of the world.
Author Resource:-
Dominic Donaldson is an expert in the engineering industry.
Find out more about Air Conditioning and how the services available can help with choosing air requirements.
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