this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023

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TIL The first air conditioner was created not for cooling a room but to prevent humidity causing swelling pages and blurry prints in a printing press (www.smithsonianmag.com)

submitted 10 months ago by maniajack to c/til

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

At the turn of the 20th century, humidity threatened the reputation of Brooklyn’s Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographic and Publishing Company’s high-quality color printing. After two summers of extreme heat disrupted business and caused swelling pages and blurry prints, the printing company found that a nascent cooling industry could offer help.

Willis Carrier, a 25-year-old experimental engineer, created a primitive cooling system to reduce humidity around the printer. He used an industrial fan to blow air over steam coils filled with cold water; the excess humidity would then condense on the coils and produce cooled air.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Very cool article! (Har) Tx for posting.

Little bit of a goofy mistake in it about a supposed 1939 St. Louis World Fair. NYC was 1939. St. Louis was 1904.

[–] StewartGilligan 8 points 10 months ago

Well, talk about a cool solution to a pressing problem! 😉

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

It turns out cooling and reheating air is the best way to reduce humidity.

[+] [email protected] -19 points 10 months ago (2 children)

For context, “the turn of the 20th century” is ambiguous. In your case it means the beginning, but it could also be correctly understood as the year 1999.

Better to say “at the beginning of the 20th century” to avoid confusion.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

“Turn of the century” always means the beginning of the century

[–] maniajack 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'll make sure to tell the Smithsonian 😃, it was just a copy/paste from their site for people who don't want to click the link. But doesn't "the TURN of the 20th century" imply that it's the start of, not the end of the century... like 1999 is near the turn of the 21st century, which occurred in 2000.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yes, it very much so does imply the start of the century