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How and when did air conditioning emerge?

Today we want to talk about the air-conditioning in a different way, knowing its history and knowing how it came to be the system we know today.

Historical data

  • As for the term, it should be noted that it was already used in ancient Rome, where water from aqueducts was circulated through the walls of some houses to cool them.
  • A Chinese inventor named Ding Huan created a rotating fan for the air-conditioning which consisted of seven wheels and was operated manually. Later, Emperor Xuanzong built a fresco hall in his palace, that is, water-activated fans and jets of water that came out from the fountains, thus creating a cooling system.
  • All of this happened in classical times, but it was in medieval Persia that buildings used cisterns and wind towers to achieve greater cooling during the hottest months of the year.
  • In 1758, American Benjamin Franklin and British John Hadley experimented to find the principle of evaporation as a way to cool an object quickly, and eventually confirmed that the evaporation of volatile liquids such as alcohol and ether could be used to reduce the temperature of an object.
  • In 1842, an American named John Gorrie, a physician, used lathe technology to create ice that would be used to cool the air for patients at his health center, thus obtaining a patent for his ice factory.
  • But it was not until 1902 when the first unit of measurement was invented. air-conditioning By Willis Carrier, Buffalo, USA. It all started with the intention of solving a humidity problem at the printing company where he worked, and he managed to cool the air blown through the cold reels, allowing him to monitor the amount of humidity contained in the production process.
  • In 1921, Willis Haviland Carrier patented the Centrifugal Refrigeration Machine, which was used to cool the air in large spaces, such as movie theaters or commercial premises, and was a more stable, safe, and efficient system than previously known. However, sales of air conditioning for residential use began after World War II.

Today we enjoy a air-conditioning Much more complex and adapted to the needs of modern life, but it was thanks to all these historical events that we now enjoy the possibility of cooling our homes to the temperature we desire during the hottest months of the year. Today, we can even program our home's temperature remotely, thanks to artificial intelligence.