ASHRAE Insights

Some short and humorous quotations about air conditioning:

“…[H]ospitals may be so arranged that heat, flies, nor dust need ever be present to harass and torment the patients. This is accomplished at a cost so comparatively small as scarcely to deserve a mention. Had Mr. Soames made no discovery but this, he would be entitled to (and receive) the gratitude of the human race.”
—US Congressman Daniel Soames, hyping his air conditioning system proposal in an 1865 marketing pamphlet.

“If man has the intelligence to heat his house in the wintertime, why does he not cool it in the summer? We go up to the Arctic regions and heat our houses and live. We go down to the tropics and die.”
—Alexander Graham Bell, quoted in National Geographic, 1918.

“We did it quietly, because we didn’t know if it would work.”
—Frank Neely, commenting on the air conditioning of Rich’s Department Store, Atlanta, in 1924.

“The development and advancement of air conditioning is another indication pointing to the fact that nothing can block progress, not even an inordinate cost of producing results.”
—HVAC Engineer Werner Nygren, quoted in Heating and Ventilating, January 1930.