This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Before the air conditioner was invented, human beings were at a loss for how to cool themselves. Some of the ideas were arguably doomed from the start: In the 19th century, as Derek Thompson noted in a 2017 article, New England companies shipped huge ice cubes insulated with sawdust around the country. “There were even shortages during mild winters—‘ice famines,’” he wrote.
The air conditioner was not only a brilliant innovation; it changed the course of human life. In the U.S., it allowed people to migrate to the Sun Belt, to Atlanta and Phoenix, altering the country’s demographics and politics. Globally, it allowed people in countries with excruciating heat to work more, leading to new sites of productivity and wealth. Today’s newsletter explores how the air conditioner has already shaped our world, and how it continues to change our lives for better and for worse.
On Air-Conditioning
Your Air Conditioner Is Lying to You
By Daniel Engber
How does money-saver mode make sense?
How Air-Conditioning Invented the Modern World
By Derek Thompson
A new book by the economist Tim Harford on history’s greatest breakthroughs explains why barbed wire was a revolution, paper money was an accident, and HVACs were a productivity booster. (From 2017)
The Moral History of Air-Conditioning
By Shane Cashman
Cooling the air was once seen as sinful. Maybe the idea wasn’t entirely wrong. An Object Lesson.
Still Curious?
- America the air-conditioned: Cooling technology has become an American necessity—but an expensive one, Lora Kelley wrote last year.
- America’s doublethink on working through the heat: Heat can be deadly; no federal rules currently exist to protect workers against that danger, Zoë Schlanger wrote last year.
Other Diversions
- What the fastest-growing Christian group reveals about America
- Why Wittgenstein was right about silence
- “What Hula taught me”
P.S.
I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. Diego Gutierrez, 63, sent a photo of Mohonk Preserve in New York.
I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
— Isabel
The post How Air-Conditioning Built Our Reality appeared first on The Atlantic.
