Air Conditioners: The Hot Topic of Cold Air
What you thought you knew

By: Rachel Jacobs

This summer has been excruciatingly hot, and air conditioners have been running overtime. Have you ever wondered how air conditioners became such an essential part of our lives, though? Would you believe it all started when President James Garfield was shot?

It may seem strange, but that is what happened. In 1881, doctors believed that James Garfield's death would be attributed not only to his gun shot wound, but also to the heat. Therefore, engineers tried to come up with a solution to the problem. They created a machine that pumped air into a tube past a large cistern of shaved ice and water. Then, a fan blew the cooled air into the room. This was not a practical way to cool a room because four tons of ice were needed per day for this early-time “air conditioner.”

Since ice was not a good way to cool a room, scientists worked to find chemicals that would have similar effects.

They found chemicals that would work, such as ammonia. The problem was that ammonia was toxic. In the late 1920s to early 1930s, Freon slowly took over. Of course, the real question was how to spread the cool air throughout buildings. Originally, there were air conditioners on wheels that could be moved throughout the building. Then, the window air conditioner came into play. All of this spanned twenty years, until central heating and air units became a large part of our lives.

The central air units have not changed much since, except to make building in hotter climates more popular. The strange thing about this is that the assassination of a president drastically changed the United States for the better. An important person was sacrificed to make this country more livable, and I am now grateful to be sitting in my cool, air conditioned house. Are you?