History of Air Conditioning
It is a wonderful thing to be able to flip a switch, and have an entire room cooled off through air conditioning. Portable room air conditioners make sense when you wish to cool certain parts of your home, office, or covered outdoor living spaces. Air conditioning is commonly found in buildings today, but it was not always the case throughout history.
Wealthy ancient Egyptian families could enjoy the cooling benefits brought from aqueduct water that traversed the insides of walls in buildings. Water was an expensive commodity in that hot region of the world, so only the rich could afford this luxury. Medieval Persians made use of wind towers and cisterns to cool their buildings. Wind would be captured in the wind tower, and it was then directed over the water in the open cistern, which would evaporate and cool the ambient temperature inside the dwelling.
Later on, the idea that liquefied ammonia, when it evaporated, could cool the air was thought up by British scientist Michael Faraday in 1820. In America in 1842, Dr. John Gorrie created a machine to make ice, and he used the ice to cool the air in his hospital in Florida.