ASHRAE Journal - December 2019 - 45

ASHRAE - CELEBRATING 125 YEARS

outside temperature, the novelty of systems attracted
more scrutiny than if a theater had no system at all.

Figure 1 Madison Square Theater. Source: Cool: How Air-Conditioning Changed
Everything [New York Public Library, Billy Rose Theater Division]

20th Century Experimentation
Through the remainder of the 19th century, emerging into the 20th century, experimentation continued
with cooling systems but was seen through the lens of
fascination rather than pure necessity. A greater fascination occurred starting in 1882, when Thomas Edison
ﬁrst made electricity available to consumers.1 Twobladed ceiling fans and tabletop fans became available,
developed by Schuyler Skaats Wheeler. These electric
fans were considered high-ticket items, costing up to
$500 in today's dollars. In 1895, the Chicago Telephone
Company developed a custom ventilation system using
an "air washer," prior to the much fuller understanding
of air properties that would later come with psychrometrics. Humidity was not well understood, and an air
washer system on its own was also unreliable.
In 1880, Alfred Wolff, at the age of 21, set up a business
as a "Steam Engineer." In a decade, he became known as
a heating-and-ventilation expert, with clients such as
St. Patrick's Cathedral and Carnegie Hall. Although ice
production had become more well-known by this time,
Wolff knew using ice for cooling was limited in its potential. In 1899, he received a commission from Cornell
University to develop a ventilation system for its Medical
College, as well as a refrigerating system for its dissecting rooms.¹ This led to the development of another commission for the New York Stock Exchange, which opened
in 1903, considered the ﬁrst high-proﬁle application of
a cooling system speciﬁcally for comfort, rather than
textiles, manufacturing or food storage. Wolff would go
on to develop systems for Columbia University, the New
York Public Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, which interestingly noted the beneﬁt of constant
humidity for preservation of art. When Wolff died in
1909, the stage was set for broader adoption of comfort
cooling systems, not only for those with means, but for
all.

Comfort Cooling Evolution
At the beginning of the 20th century, Alexander Bell
was associated with the telephone and Thomas Edison
with electricity, but comfort cooling still did not have
a single champion. Willis Haviland Carrier, a graduate of Cornell University in 1901, set up Buffalo Forge's

Department of Experimental Engineering in 1902.
Carrier ﬁrst developed a system for the Sackett-Wilhems
Lithographic and Publishing Company. Printing in color
on paper was highly sensitive to humidity; Carrier used
a steam coil as a chilled water coil, and coupled with
control of a fan and water temperature, was able to see
excess humidity condensing on the coil. This initial system evolved over a decade of scientiﬁc exploration and
experimentation, resulting in the 1911 publication of
work known as the "Rational Psychrometric Formulae." 1
By 1919, when Carrier published "The Story of
Manufactured Weather," increasing acceptance of cooling technology for manufacturers was well underway,
but comfort cooling was still not widely embraced. It
noted, "the non-industrial applications-residences,
schools, churches, theatres, ofﬁce buildings, etc.-have
been comparatively few, because the Average Man is a
peculiar animal in the way he dissociates the principles
he employs in his business and those he uses in the conduct of his home, his church, or even his amusements."
And again, the stage was set for the signiﬁcant impact of
Hollywood on exposing an entire generation to comfort
cooling.
In 1896, the ﬁrst Vitascope showing occurred, an
invention of Thomas Edison. Tiny movie theaters started
to show up, and at 5 cents, the cost of admission was
signiﬁcantly less than for Broadway theater, or about
D E C E M B E R 2 0 19

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