Atlanta history museum exhibit ponders impact of air conditioning the South

By Mitch Stacy, Associated Press, 7/6/2001 01:37

ATLANTA (AP) The summertime livin' has gotten a whole lot easier in these parts since a fella named Carrier invented the air conditioner.

Few modern inventions have done so much to alter a region and a new exhibit at an Atlanta history museum this month brings it home.

Air conditioning changed forever the way Southerners ate, slept, built their homes, interacted with neighbors and treated their ill.

Largely because of it, people started flocking to Southern states instead of out of them, which was the trend in the first part of the century.

''General Electric has proved a more devastating invader than General Sherman when it comes to ruining the South's distinctive character,'' University of South Florida historian Raymond Arsenault once opined.

The fact that the climate-control system in the modern Atlanta History Center is set at a constant and comfortable 70 degrees was not lost on curator Don Rooney, who warms up visitors under space heaters in the early part of the tour then blasts them with lovely, cool, dehumidified air.

Before air conditioning, long, sticky summer afternoons made being indoors unbearable, the shaded porch wasn't much cooler, and electric fans did little more than move the humid, dirty air around.

Southern homes were built with wide porches and long, low eaves to fend off the sun. People spent a lot more time outside, in straw hats, sun bonnets and seersucker suits. They visited on the porch more, and local swimming holes teemed.

Although a Florida doctor, John Gorrie, first had the idea of blowing air over buckets of ice to comfort malaria patients at the Marine Hospital in Apalachicola in the 1830s, it is a Yankee Willis Haviland Carrier who is considered ''the father of air conditioning.''

Carrier was a young engineer from Cornell University when he figured out moisture could be extracted from air by forcing it over refrigerated coils. He created the first true climate-control system in 1902 for a New York City printing plant, and soon it was being installed in textile mills, tobacco warehouses, bakeries and candy factories.

Most people first enjoyed the cool indoors at movie houses. The Empire Theatre in Montgomery, Ala., was among the first in the country to put in air conditioning in 1917. By 1930, Carrier had installed it in 300 theaters.

''Movie theaters in the South just dried up in the summer prior to air conditioning. Some even closed,'' Rooney said. ''This changed everything.''

Not until the mid-'20s did the focus of air conditioning turn to human comfort.

The federal government soon recognized a good thing. The House of Representatives was air-conditioned in 1928, followed by the Senate, White House and Supreme Court.

''Washington, D.C., used to all but shut down in the summertime,'' said Bernard Nagenast, an Ohio engineer and co-author of a book on the industry called ''Hot and Cold: Mastering the Great Indoors.'' ''Air conditioning allowed the government to work year round, the office buildings to stay open and more laws got made.''

The B&O Railroad cooled the first passenger coach in 1929, and a decade later Packard offered the first car with factory installed air. Atlanta assumed its place in history with the first air-cooled public buses in 1945, complete with faux icicles adorning the windows.

Home air conditioners were introduced in the 1930s, but in the South it would remain a luxury for almost two more decades. That changed in 1951 when the inexpensive window unit was introduced, a development Nagenast calls ''the democratization of air conditioning.''

By 1960, a little more than 18 percent of homes in the South were equipped, compared with about 12 percent nationwide. By 1970, half of Southern homes had air conditioning. Today, 96 percent have some form, compared with 80 percent nationwide.

''If it was the middle of the summer, think about what would you be doing if there was no air conditioning, where you would be,'' Nagenast said. ''Life would be a lot more uncomfortable.''

On the Net:

Atlanta History Center: http://www.atlantahistorycenter.com

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2001