Air Conditioning in the Golden Era

[HudsonHawk]

Great thread to be resurrected...

I grew up in Florida without A/C at home. And this was in the 70's and 80's. When you didn't have it, you just didn't know what you were missing. We found ways to try to keep cool...lots of windows in the house (jalousie type windows that you could keep open even in a rainstorm) and fans. It was the worst at night. We'd wet the sheets down and turn the fan on, that helped. When it was really hot, we'd just sleep on the terrazzo floor. It was always 20 degrees cooler than the air temperature.

We also didn't have A/C at school, though they had it at the high school by the time I got to the 10th grade. The back of every classroom was windows floor to ceiling, and there was a giant draw fan at the front of the room. When it was on, you couldn't hear yourself scream, and papers blew everywhere.

 

[MPicciotto]

Hey my kind of business! I've been in heating and air conditioning for the last 14 years. A couple of points to add to the conversation.

"Air Conditioning" can also mean heat when looking at old advertisements. I discovered this reading 1940's Architectural Journal magazines. There were advertisements for "Heating air conditioning" "air conditioning" "cooling air conditioning" etc.

Buildings and homes were constructed to function without mechanical cooling. That is the large tilting windows to catch and funnel in a breeze, transom windows over doors, high ceilings in warm climates, large porches, shade trees, "whole house fans" and in some cases the accompanying roof scuttle in the attic. When homes started being built with central AC in mind these features were eliminated making a modern home reliant on the central system.

Here's a tip for you. If it's cool or comfortable outside and you want fresh air in your home close all but two windows at opposite ends of the house (in my case a rancher this work, you'll have to experiment with your home) and place a box fan in the window blowing OUT. Fresh air will be sucked IN the other window and rapidly bring the house down to the outdoor temperature. That is how I cool my home now in the late summer, fall when we have hot days but cool nights.

Early refrigerants fell into a couple of categories. Toxic: such as Sulfur Dioxide or Ammonia. and Flammable: such as propane. DuPont invented "Freon" (a trademark of the DuPont corporation) and it was considered a miracle gas. I've heard it was demonstrated by a salesman taking a big breath of it and blowing out a candle to show that a. he didn't die and b. that he didn't catch fire. This was good news for homeowners with such appliances as the GE "Monitor Top" refrigerator, which earlier models did use Sulfur Dioxide. But to this day ammonia is still used in large industrial systems. Propane is seeing a resurgence in use, particularly in Europe where laws concerning ozone depletion are even more strict the in the US.

There also used to be systems used on truck lines that consisted of a bottle of liquid nitrogen and a series of spray nozzles that would disperse the nitrogen over the load keeping it chilled. When these trucks arrived to be unloaded they had to be ventilated before anybody could enter them.

Well that's a long enough post for now. I'm sure I have more tidbits I can offer.
Matt

 

[Heather]

Very interesting thread

 

[Absinthe_1900]

My Mom bought a house when I was a kiddo that had two huge 1940s Carrier AC units.
As I remember them they stuck out about 18"-24" inside the window and were half round streamlined, and painted with a fake wood-grain finish.

The two units would cool the whole house, and we had them until 1969, when Mom had the house done up with central air, the installer bought the two Carriers, and took them to his lake house, they probably out lasted the 18 different Whirlpool gas ac units we went though till we got one that wasn't defective.:eusa_doh:

 

[MikeKardec]

When I was a kid we always called those triangle vent windows on cars "Wind Wings," maybe that was some company's brand name for them.

Swamp Coolers worked really well (and didn't rust things) in the desert southwest where it's really dry. The drier it is the better they worked.

Spending some of my growing up years in the deep California desert we had an adobe house with a tile roof, which was a start in the right direction. Then we had ceiling fans and when mom put us to bed we slept on a damp towel. It actually worked pretty well.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Folk, you have here a topic that is close to my heart. Really: probably lodged in one of my ventricles.

We didn't have A/C in Da Swamp, New Orleans, where I grew up, except for movie theatres and department stores. Schools? The teacher opened the windows (and in April-May, you'd smell the flowers and know that summer vacation was coming). In our slave-quarter apartment in the French Quarter, we had no flow-through ventilation -- buildings all around were higher -- so a fan was it, along with open windows that let mosquitoes in. I spent nearly every summer with itchy bites on arms and legs.

When I was nearly 13, Mom bought our first window unit. Instantly I snapped into action: I moved indoors, all summer long, and ventured out only to the library. Oh, that was "air-cooled," too.

When I lived in Colorado, Denver to be exact, many of the natives had this idea, "You don't need air in Colorado." Panda feathers! I don't care how dry it is. When the outside temp is 100 F., you need cooled air. I visited people with swamp coolers, and they did get the interiors a bit cooler, but it felt damp and sticky.

Well, I'll hop off the rant box. But I truly don't know how people survived in the Golden Era, or later, without cooled air in houses, businesses, and cars.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Oh, and regarding cars: My father's '47 Cadillac coupe, the first auto I recall, was black, and hot, w/ no A/C. Of course, I was a kid, and everything was hot, so it didn't bother me.

His '58 Chevy Impala had no factory air. He added an underdash unit, a "Frigi-King" (?), that was the size of a 1970s home stereo receiver. (He also added plastic seat covers to the car. They yellowed, cracked, and were blisteringly hot.)

After that, his 1966 and 1974 Chevies had factory air.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Years ago I read an account of President Garfield's assassination. It said that he was provided with a primitive form of air conditioning in his sick room for relief from the summer heat. I did a Google search and it turns out my memory was not playing tricks.

"In an effort to relieve the sick man from the heat of a Washington summer, Navy engineers rigged up an early version of the modern air conditioner. Fans blew air over a large box of ice and into the President's sickroom; the device worked well enough to lower the temperature twenty degrees"

This was in July or August of 1881.

 

[Stearmen]

When I lived in Colorado, Denver to be exact, many of the natives had this idea, "You don't need air in Colorado." Panda feathers! I don't care how dry it is. When the outside temp is 100 F., you need cooled air.

Your story reminds me of the time my Grandmother visited us in Colorado. She was born at the turn of the last century, and had seven kids living on the farm. She commented how hot it was, my mother said, "it's not Iowa hot, where it is 90 degrees and 90% humidity." My no nonsense Grand mother snapped back, 90 degrees is 90 degrees, and thats hot!"

 

[Stearmen]

(He also added plastic seat covers to the car. They yellowed, cracked, and were blisteringly hot.)
.

Were they the kind that left the diamond pattern on the back of your legs when you wore shorts?

 

[Fading Fast]

When I was a kid we always called those triangle vent windows on cars "Wind Wings," maybe that was some company's brand name for them.

Swamp Coolers worked really well (and didn't rust things) in the desert southwest where it's really dry. The drier it is the better they worked.

Spending some of my growing up years in the deep California desert we had an adobe house with a tile roof, which was a start in the right direction. Then we had ceiling fans and when mom put us to bed we slept on a damp towel. It actually worked pretty well.

Growing up in the 60s, we called those little (and awesome) triangle windows in cars - that properly positioned, shot a happy making stream of cooling air to your face and chest - "brake" windows. That might have been a nickname my family made up, but to me and to this day, that was their official name. Did anybody else call them that?

 

[Benzadmiral]

Were they the kind that left the diamond pattern on the back of your legs when you wore shorts?

I think they seared my legs before they left any patterns. Just like now, I didn't wear shorts that often. Wouldn't it have been cool, literally, if companies had marketed the reflecting sun shields you can buy now to put up in your windshield and back glass? That would have kept the heat from building up as much inside our parked cars. And window tinting . . .

 

[fashion frank]

Theatre air conditioning started in the early 20s, and by the middle of the decade the Carrier Corporation was wiring entire theatre chains with AC equipment. Home AC units were being sold by the late thirties -- I have a whole book of service data put out by the Philco Corporation in 1940 for its full line of window-sized ACs. They weren't as popular as they became after the war, but they did exist.

The signs I remember most are the ones put out by Kool cigarettes, on the front doors of air-conditioned lunchrooms and stores, with Willie the Penguin saying "IT'S KOOL INSIDE!"

Lizzie Maine your right on the money . I know a guy who works for Carrier and his father also worked for them and he was telling me that they first started in movie houses to draw in people during the summer ( like Johnny Depp in the movie
Dillenger ).

All the Best ,Fashion Frank

 

[F. J.]

Collars wilted . . .

This thread makes me think of the beginning of Harper Lee's classic To Kill A Mockingbird.
An excerpt from Chapter One:

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.

 

[Fibber Mcgee]

I have several brochures from hotels in the 1940s that advertise air conditioning. And I know trains had it fairly early and preceding air conditioning trains used air forced over blocks of ice stored under the train.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Radio and television studios were heavily air conditioned -- television especially so, because of the intense lighting required. Some experimental prewar TV studios were kept so cold that the technical staff would work wearing winter coats.

 

[Atticus Finch]

When I was a child in the fifties and early sixties, we had no air conditioning. We used fans in the windows and sat on the porch until bedtime. Swamp coolers and other such devices didn't work in Beaufort because the humidity was always too high. Water simply didn't evaporate, especially at night. Neither did sweat.

Sometime during the mid-sixties my father bought a window unit air conditioner. After that, on very hot nights, everyone in my family slept in one bedroom...me on an army cot. Then, probably around 1969 or 1970, my father installed central air conditioning in our house. Even then, most families in our area used only window units or had no A/C at all.

Funny thing is, I don't remember being hot when I was a kid. I didn't start getting hot in the summer until after we began using air conditioning. But, then again, I didn't have to wear suits and ties when I was a kid.

AF

 

[Dan Allen]

In the sixties I lived in Florida and several of the old "cracker's" home still existed. They were marvels of engineering, with high roofs to move heat away from the living areas, and verandas all around. To take advantage of the local prevailing winds caused by ocean winds reversing from day to night the windows were adjustable in size so that the leeward windows could be larger than the windward causing a Venturi effect. There was always a breeze. I dated a young lady who lived in one and was amazed at how comfortable it was even in the sticky heat that Florida is famous for

On another note, I have owned a couple of Autos with cowl Vents that "popped" up in front of windshield. At least while moving they did a admiral job of cooling you down. ( just make sure that the screen is in place least bumble bees get in--I personally know about that).

 

[LizzieMaine]

A car with a combination of a cowl vent and vent windows will make you wonder why they ever bothered to invent automotive AC. The only disadvantage is that it doesn't keep you very cool when you're waiting to pass a road crew.

 

[Fading Fast]

My memory of air conditioning from the 60s and, even, the 70s, is that the window units were solid (heavy, metal and just ran all the time) and blew freezing cold air. Since, about the 1990s, they seemed to become cheap, plastic and the air isn't that cold. Having lived in NYC apartment buildings (with some time in Boston apartment buildings) for almost 30 years - and since most of those apartments are air conditioned with window units (some of the apartments I rented in the 80s, clearly had acs dating back to the 60s) - I have had a lot of experience with this.

The older ones, turned on and blew cold, cold air and almost never broke down. The newer ones don't have that cold blast, they need to warm up, then they cycle on and off constantly and only when set on high (or low temp) do you even get decently cold air. I know they are more energy efficient, but are they really as they seem to blow less cold air and use less electricity (I get that they really are using less BTUs per whatever output unit is measured, I'm just saying, they don't have that blast of cold air and they break more often).

Doesn't feel like progress.