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 Stultifying heat and humidity in the midst of summer is no great
surprise. No problem. Just turn on the air conditioner and hit the gas,
right? Not so fast. Air-conditioned cars are a relatively recent
innovation. Seventy-something years ago, production automotive air
conditioning was called mechanical refrigeration. The car that made
driving with the windows up on a hot day cool was the 1940 Packard 180.
The mechanical refrigeration unit automatically switched to heating in
winter, and as such was dubbed not an air conditioner, but rather a Weather Conditioner.
The factory-installed technological triumph cooled, heated,
dehumidified, and even filtered cabin air from pollen and dust and other
unwanted weather-related items.
Surprisingly, as we learned from a recent Popular Mechanics
for a historical roundup of air cooling technologies, this development
came rather late - decades after the invention of air conditioning in
1902.
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