develop a practical air conditioner gained some degree of urgency in 1881 following the shooting of President James Garfield. Garfield was shot in late July, and over the succeeding 58 days before the President died temperatures hovered around 90 degrees and the humidity was uncomfortably high. The physicians attending Garfield persuaded government officials to call in naval engineers to solve the temperature and humidity problem in the President's White House bedroom.
The naval engineers were able to build a device, for lack of a better word, that did provide some relief. The device consisted of a large cast iron box the size of a coffin (appropriate considering the venue) that "contained dozens of screens, each made of a thin layer of terry cloth cotton." A tank atop the box was kept filled with a half ton of shaved ice, salt, and water. As the ice melted, a briny mush formed and trickled down on the screens. A fan placed at one end of the box "sucked in air from the outside, which was cooled as it passed across the screens and was then pumped through a duct into the President's bedroom." Tinkering with this setup eventually reduced the noise made by the machine, lowered the humidity, and dropped the temperature level twenty degrees.
While the naval engineers achieved some air conditioning success, that success was achieved at a high price. Over the 58 day period, a half million pounds of ice were consumed. President Garfield's air conditioner simply was not practical for widespread application. What the experiment did demonstrate, however, was that the artificial conditioning of air was possible and with additional research might even be practical for widespread application at some future date.
Twenty one years later in 1902, Willis Carrier did install an air conditioner that was both functional and practical in a manufacturing environment. The first hospital ward was air conditioned in 1914, and the fir...