So....Ode to Dr. John Gorrie (1803-1855).
"Who is that?"
Trust me....
You love this guy
He was an American physician,
in Apalachicola, Florida
who invented an
ice-making machine
that blew air over a bucket of ice
for cooling hospital rooms of patients
suffering from malaria and yellow fever.
The first air conditioner!
Told ya you loved him.
In 1881, when President James Garfield was dying, naval engineers constructed a box-like structure containing cloths saturated with melted ice water, where a fan blew hot air overhead. This contraption was able to lower a room by 20 degrees but consumed half a million pounds of ice in two months' time.
The first air-conditioned home was that of Charles Gates, son of gambler John "Bet a Million" Gates, in Minneapolis in 1914. However, during the first wave of their installation, Carrier's air conditioner units were large, expensive, and dangerous due to the toxic ammonia that was used as coolant.
In 1922, they replaced the ammonia with a benign coolant and added a central compressor to reduce the size of the unit.
The next advance was when Carrier sold his invention to movie-theater operators, with a notable debut in 1925 at the Rivoli on Broadway in New York City.
In a short amount of time, air conditioners were installed in office buildings, department stores and railroad cars. The United States House of Representatives had air conditioners installed in 1928, with the Senate, White House and Supreme Court following suit in the years after. After World War II, window unit air conditioners appeared......
And our south was changed forever!!!!