Tuesday, June 08, 2010

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare













As of 2010, it's probably safe to say that a lot of people in "highly developed countries" take AC for granted -- when it's working. We kinda forget that modern air conditioning is only a little more than a century old. Sort of like the aeroplane and the automobile.  A North Carolinian coined the term air conditioning -- Stuart W. Cramer (1868-1940) of Thomasville.  Even though the concept goes way back to "ancient times," I'm talking electrical AC.  Requires electricity.  Makes hot, humid places more bearable -- and more thickly populated. Makes movie theatres cool, and cars.  [A truly interesting book: Gail Cooper's Air-Conditioning America: Engineers and the Controlled Environment, 1900-1960 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002)].













Need we go into the downside of AC and its cultural outgrowths? One probably doesn't have to move beyond Henry Miller's blistering nonfiction work, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, (New Directions, 1945, 1970), to catch a glimpse. Still, while Miller scores any number of direct hits on American consumerism and general shortsighted tomfool greediness, I'm most definitely a "fan" of AC on hot, humid days. How about you?

Today's Rune: Signals.

3 comments:

Mark Krone said...

Erik,

I try to go as long as I can without ac but after I turned 40, I no longer could sleep in the heat, even with a fan. So, ac it is on about 15-20 days a year.

Mark K.

Boston

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Charles Gramlich said...

The world down here in south Louisiana was a completely different world before AC. We're still living in the culturally influences of that time, although it's changing.