BackStory

Climate Control: A History of Heating & Cooling

3/5/2010 - Join the Discussion | (11 Comments)

Well into the 19th century, Americans relied on fireplaces to warm their homes in winter. But that method wasn’t simply inefficient — it was ineffective, too. Travel a few feet from the fireplace, and you might start shivering again.

In this episode, the History Guys look at what happened when stoves became widely available in the mid-19th century, and how that technology altered Americans’ way of life. They also consider the advent of air conditioning a century later, and explore its far-reaching implications on everything from architecture and leisure to demography and politics.

How did America become the “land of comfort?” And what lessons does the history of climate control hold for us today?

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Guests Include:

• Daniel Filene — blogger, Cold House Journal
• Howell Harris — historian of technology and expert on 19th century stoves
• Gail Cooper — author, Air Conditioning America: Engineers and the Controlled Environment 1900-1960

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Further Reading:

18th Century

• Benjamin Franklin’s 1744 pamphlet “Account of the New Invented Pennsylvanian Fire-Places“
• Benjamin Franklin recalls his invention of the Franklin Stove in his autobiography

19th Century

• Howell Harris’s extensive web space exploring the cast-iron stove
• “The Favorite Poison of America“: Andrew Jackson Downing on the evils of stoves
• Excerpts from the letters and diaries of Frederic Tudor, 19th-century ice mogul
• Gavin Weightman’s excellent book, “The Frozen Water Trade: A True Story“
• The heritage of HVAC

20th Century

• The Chairman of the Air Conditioning and Refrigerator Institute discusses early AC, beginning with early 20th-century “atmospheric theaters”
• The story of the experimental 1950s “air-conditioned village” in Austin, TX, plus the results of the experiment
• An interview with air conditioning historian Marsha Ackerman
• Air conditioning as emblem of American malaise: Henry Miller’s Air Conditioned Nightmare
• Who needs heat? Not these 21st-century New Yorkers…much like their predecessors at the turn of the 20th century
• Cold House Journal, the blog of a couple who spent one winter in Maine with “almost no heat”
• You’ve just experienced the warmest decade on record