Air Conditioning

Ventilators were invented in medieval Egypt, they were widely used in the majority of houses throughout Cairo during the Middle ages. A man called Abd al-Latif al Baghdadi managed to describe in detail how the ventilators worked in 1200. In his report he announced that almost every house in Cairo had these ventilltors fitted, he also announced that they were costing anywhere from 1 to 500 Dinars depending solely on the size and shape. In 1820 the British inventor and scientist called Michael Faraday discovered that liquefied ammonia, which has been compressed, would chill air if the ammonia was allowed to evaporate. Then in 1842 a Floridian physician called John Gorrie started using compressor technology to create ice. This idea was used as air conditioning in his hospital in Florida. He even hope on eventually building a large scale ice-maker to regulate the temperature of buildings, He even envisioned centralized air conditioning on a huge scale to cool whole cities. Though the prototype leaked and worked intermittently, John Gorrie was granted a patent for his ice-making machine. The Envisions vanished once his Chief Financial backer passed away meaning Gorrie did not get the money needed so desperately to develop his machine. According to the author of his biography, he blamed the “Ice King,” Mr Frederic Tudor, for his failure. He suspected Tudor had launched a campaign against the invention. Unfortunately when Dr. Gorrie died in 1855, the idea of air conditioning died with his for the next 50 year.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 2:34 pm and is filed under History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.