BackStory

The following links and documents relate to the BackStory episode “Climate Control: A History of Heating & Cooling”, originally broadcast in March of 2010. You can listen to the entire episode here.

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
• A history of radiant heating and cooling, beginning in the first century, B.C. (PDF)
• Coping with cold in colonial Virginia

19th Century

• “Conquering Winter“: an article by Howell Harris, plus his extensive web space on 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