Air Conditioning Was Never Meant for You

Air conditioning wasn't built for people. In 1902 it was built to keep paper from swelling in a Brooklyn printing plant. Here's how it reached your home. The first modern air-conditioning system was designed by Willis Carrier for a Brooklyn printing plant, and for years its customers were factories. This video follows it from paper to movie theaters, department stores, window boxes and new suburbs, looks at how much it really changed where Americans live, and asks why the US keeps its buildings so cold. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:54 The Printing Problem 2:36 Not for People 4:30 Cold Tickets 6:49 The Window Box 8:48 Closing the Windows 10:33 Moving South 13:07 Why America Keeps It So Cold 15:18 The Thermostat SOURCES • Arsenault, R. (2015). "Suddenly Less Summer: How air conditioning transformed the South." 64 Parishes. • Pauken, M. (1999). "Sleeping Soundly on Summer Nights: A History of Air Conditioning in the Home." ASHRAE Journal, May 1999. • Carrier, W. H. (1906). U.S. Patent 808,897, "Apparatus for treating air." • Lester, P. (2015). "History of Air Conditioning." U.S. Department of Energy. • Buildings (2012). "110 Years of Modern Air Conditioning." • Carrier Corporation. "Frequently Asked Questions" and "1923–1929" (company history). • Hill, M. (2006). "Air-Conditioning." NCpedia. • Theatre Historical Society of America. "Scientifically Cooled! The Dawn of Air-Condition Theatres." • Schmidt, J. R. (2011). "The Central Park Theater: Chicago's first movie palace." WBEZ. • University of New Orleans Library. Krauss Department Store Collection (Mss 322). • Bradley, F. (2026). "Keeping Congress Cool." Architect of the Capitol. • U.S. Energy Information Administration. "Electricity use in homes." • Gibson, C. (1998). Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 to 1990. U.S. Census Bureau. • Glaeser, E. L., and Tobio, K. (2008). "The Rise of the Sunbelt." Southern Economic Journal 74(3). • Barreca, A., et al. (2016). "Adapting to Climate Change: The Remarkable Decline in the US Temperature-Mortality Relationship over the Twentieth Century." Journal of Political Economy 124(1). • International Energy Agency (2018). The Future of Cooling. • BEIS (2021). Cooling in the UK. Research Paper 2021/050. • Statistics Canada (2023). "Air conditioning: More Canadians keep cool, but costs heat up." • Kingma, B., and van Marken Lichtenbelt, W. (2015). "Energy consumption in buildings and female thermal demand." Nature Climate Change 5(12). If you enjoy stories about the everyday things you never thought to question, subscribe for the next one. #airconditioning #history #WillisCarrier