Main entry:

Cooper, Gail, 1954-

Title & Author:

Air-conditioning America : engineers and the controlled environment, 1900-1960 / Gail Cooper.

Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, ©1998.

Description:

x, 228 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Series:

Johns Hopkins studies in the history of technology ; [new ser., no. 23]

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-221) and index.
Ch. 1. It's Not the Heat, It's the Humidity -- Ch. 2. Custom Production, Industrial Processing, and Engineering Guarantees -- Ch. 3. Defining the Healthy Indoor Environment, 1904-1929 -- Ch. 4. Motion-Picture Theaters, Human Comfort, and Recirculation, 1911-1930 -- Ch. 5. Mass Production, the Residential Market, and the Window Air Conditioner, 1928-1940 -- Ch. 6. From a Luxury to a Necessity, 1942-1960 -- Ch. 7. Consumers and Air Conditioning.
Also issued online.

Summary:

In this groundbreaking study, Gail Cooper shows that, from the outset, air conditioning has been the focus of conflict and controversy - well predating today's concerns about fluorocarbons and global warming. When at the turn of the century a technical elite of designers, inventors, and corporate pioneers launched this promising new technology, their ideas were challenged by workers, consumers, government regulators, business competitors, and rival professionals. Cooper describes the efforts of engineers to achieve artificial climates indoors. Such "man-made weather" helped transform the new motion-picture theaters of the teens and twenties into sumptuous palaces of luxury and comfort.
Cooper demonstrates how the lure of the open air, from rooftop schoolrooms to open-air theaters to the front porch, challenged air conditioning. Americans were slow to give up the social rituals of hot-weather living - the cold drink, the cool clothes, the summer vacation - for the comforts of either the window air conditioner or the central system.

Resources:
Book review (H-Net)
Contributor biographical information
Publisher description

ISBN:

0801857163 (acid-free, recycled paper)
9780801857164 (acid-free, recycled paper)
0801871131
9780801871139

Subject:

Air conditioning United States History.
Ventilation.
Air Conditioning history
Climatisation États-Unis Histoire.
Air conditioning
Klimaanlage
Klimatechnik
Klimaatregeling.
Sociale aspecten.
Technische vernieuwing.
United States
USA

Form/genre:

History

Added entries:

Johns Hopkins studies in the history of technology ; new ser., no. 23.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 175993
Call No.: ID TH7687.5.C66; ID:98-B2214
Status: Available