Air Conditioning in the Golden Era

[LizzieMaine]

Vent windows on cars were hailed as a huge step forward in comfort when they came into use in the late thirties. Never having owned a car with AC, I loved them -- and miss them terribly.

I also think it's time for the crank-out windshield to make its comeback.

 

[Paisley]

You mean those little triangular windows you could push out? I loved those! Eventually, you might have had to put a matchbook in the latch to get it to stay shut, though.

 

[ThesFlishThngs]

Triangle windows in cars: (what's the proper name for those?) I'd forgotten about them till my road trip to Colorado last month. Once I got out of west Texas, the outside air was lovely and cool, but I didn't want the big crosswind of having all windows opened, so with just my driver's window down a bit, I put my hand in the gap, tilted it, and at just the right angle, had a sweet breeze cooling my face. At that moment I remembered the little windows in cars of my childhood, and suddenly realized what their purpose was.

My childhood home had one window A/C unit, that my mother rarely turned on. We were just always sweaty and barely dressed all summer long; that was an accepted state of being. However, at night, when the outside air cooled down, we turned on the attic fan (I think the real term is whole house fan). It sucked the fresh night air in through opened windows, and was a beautiful thing.
My current home, built in 1917, does not have this feature, but I have considered getting such a thing installed one day. Though the downstairs remains pretty cool, as does the basement (but who wants to sleep amongst spiders and roly polies?), the bedrooms upstairs get too stuffy in summer evenings. We're lucky that central ac and heat were added some time before we bought the house, but I know an attic fan would be perfect this time of year, when the nights have cooled down.

 

[Flivver]

Vent windows on cars were a Fisher Body invention that first appeared on all GM cars in 1933. The rest of the industry soon adopted them, but for a while, at least, they had to change the design sufficiently to circumvent the GM patents. Their original name was "ventipanes".

GM was also the first company to eliminate vent windows. The first GM models to feature "Flow-Thru Ventilation" and no vent windows were the 1966 Olds Toronado and Buick Riviera. By 1969, all GM A, B and C body cars had ventless side glass.

Ventilating windshields were common on American cars from the beginning through the late 1930s. In 1925, Fisher Body introduced the VV (Vision-Ventilation) windshield on many GM closed cars. Instead of pivoting the windshield for ventilation, Fisher used a four-inch header panel above the windshield. This allowed the windshield to be raised a few inches vertically with a crank. The crank operated Fisher VV windshield was all the rage in the mid-1920s.

 

[davestlouis]

The mortuary where I work was built in 1938, and they advertised at that time that it was air conditioned. Huge airhandling equipment in the basement, that they still use today, with supplemental roof-mounted units for rooms that just don't get cool enough. You should see the electric bill though...I'm told it runs $5000 a month.

I have never lived in a house without central A/C...my parents built a new house in 1966, the year I was born, and it had central air. My grandma, on the other hand, refused to turn hers on, and most of her windows were painted shut, so she just used a small fan...she lived to be 97, so I guess she did OK, overall.

 

[ThesFlishThngs]

I remember living in London during one particularly heat-wavey summer (by UK standards of course; Okies would have laughed at the panic). Naturally there was nothing in the way of cold ac. The term 'air conditioning', I believe, meant something else there at the time, maybe referring to air filtration & purification, perhaps.
Anyway, the High Street shops were trying to relieve the sweltering misery by propping their doors open and running huge industrial fans. I don't know how the merchandise didn't all blow into the street. It made for noisy, windy, non-cool shopping, I can tell ya.

 

[J.L. Picard]

Staying cool the New York way

 

[jayem]

Small fact: First-gen systems used ammonia as the refrigerant.

Oh, wow, that's just awesome ...

Especially if you happen to use bleach religiously like most households did!

Talk about inhaling a lethal cloud...

 

[Geesie]

Today the temperatures went to the upper 90s so I tried to make myself an archaic air conditioner using a box fan and some wet towels.

It didn't work.

 

[John in Covina]

From Wikipedia:
Early commercial applications of air conditioning were manufactured to cool air for industrial processing rather than personal comfort. In 1902 the first modern electrical air conditioning was invented by Willis Haviland Carrier in Syracuse, NY. Designed to improve manufacturing process control in a printing plant, his invention controlled not only temperature but also humidity. The low heat and humidity were to help maintain consistent paper dimensions and ink alignment. Later Carrier's technology was applied to increase productivity in the workplace, and The Carrier Air Conditioning Company of America was formed to meet rising demand. Over time air conditioning came to be used to improve comfort in homes and automobiles. Residential sales expanded dramatically in the 1950s.

*****
So it was around but maybe not well known or just considered for manufacturing needs.

In the early 60's I recall that movie theaters would announce they had air conditioning on the marquee as a draw.

And who can forget the Kool Cigarettes Penguin decal on stores announcing: "Come on in it's Kool inside!" for those stores the featured A/C?

I think that there were Casinos with A/C in Las Vegas late 1940's. The Carrier A/C company certainly made a ton of money there.

 

[klind65]

Staying cool the New York way

Great photo!

 

[Hoth206]

Don't know about the golden era...

I'm not sure about the golden era, but my great grandmother (who passed away in her 90's about 5 years ago) kept her house HOT year round. I'm not sure if this was a result of her being elderly or not, but she didn't seem to mind the heat much. She lived in East Texas (read: humid) her whole life, so I think folks back then just more or less learned to adapt.

I remember mowing her yard as a kid in August (100+ degrees F & 95% humidity), sitting down in her living room and seeing the pilot light on her propane space heater lit with the AC off.

Speaking of Vent windows, I've got an old '86 Ford pickup with them, and for most of the time I've had it, the AC didn't work. Those little windows make ALL the difference.

 

[J.L. Picard]

Great photo!

Merci Klind...

 

[miss_elise]

Boy, can I relate to this! In our office building (which is very tall - a skyscraper, I guess you'd say) the temperature in the summer is always a misery for many of the tenants except for those who "never get cold." All of the secretaries in our office go about draped in shawls to ward off the coolness.

I have had this experience at other companies and wonder if it is something that is purely a function of the exigencies of having to maintain an even temperature throughout a large structure - or ? ....I don't know enough mechanics to know if this is the case. Also, I'd like to know if this excessive A/C is a preference/problem in other countries . Maybe its just a further example of the American tendency to overdo things.

fftopic: I know in Australia, buildings have their aircon on all the time because it takes about 8 hours to cool down a building, so if you have an overnight temp of 25oC then the building would be that temp pretty much all day thus violating OH & S regulations which say you have to be between 19oC and 24oC.

Once the outside temperature gets above 35oC the internal temp even with aircon on rises at 1 degree per hour. So a building at 24oC would rise during the day (or afternoon) to be pretty hot.

THis i discovered last year when the aircon in our building broke during the heat wave we were having.

 

[Ethan Bentley]

I think Marilyn Monroe gave some good tips of how to keep cool in The Seven Year Itch.

 

[dhermann1]

FDR had one

I believe I read "somewhere" that the first air conditioned theater was in 1906.
According to Robert Sherwood's book "Roosevelt and Hopkins" (a must read for all mid century history lovers) there was an air conditioner at the White House by about 1938, but FDR didn't like it, so everyone in the Oval Study (the predecessor to the Oval Office, located inside the main building) had to swelter during the boiling Washington summers.

 

[Chas]

Thermadors! Filled with water and mounted on your window. They started appearing on the market around 1930.

 

[Fletch]

Air Cooled TV Experiment

CBS had the foresight to put A/C into their television experiment station in 1931, as shown in this cut from Modern Mechanix magazine.

You might think that hot lights were the reason, but CBS' system didn't require hot lights. The studio had to be very dimly lit, with only a pinspot of light scanning the scene.

 

[TimeWarpWife]

I remember as a child in the mid-60s loving to visit my dad's sister because she had air conditioning. Then it was back home to fans pushing around hot air. My dad finally broke down and bought an AC window unit the summer of 1971. The next summer he bought a second one to put in the back of our house, thus the entire house was nice and cool all summer long. I must admit that I've not lived without AC since then - except on rare occasions when the electricity goes out or the AC itself breaks down. I'm also willing to admit I can become a bit irritable without it now.

 

[skyvue]

I'm also willing to admit I can become a bit irritable without it now.

I'm with you. By June 1, I'm scurrying from air-conditioned space to air-conditioned space and counting the days till October.

I have little use for summer (especially the humid variety we suffer through in NYC), and I don't apologize for it. It's great if you have no job and live by the beach, but that doesn't apply to most folks and certainly not to me.