The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)
by Robert J. Gordon · 12 Jan 2016 · 1,104pp · 302,176 words
-Agricultural Work, 1940–2012 Source: Table B-35, Department of Labor (Bureau of Labor Statistics), ratio linked back from 1940 to 1947. Just as the invention of air conditioning facilitated the flight of retirees to sunny southern destinations, so it also benefited the productivity, not to mention the comfort, of clerical and other white
What Technology Wants
by Kevin Kelly · 14 Jul 2010 · 476pp · 132,042 words
built to support the gasoline automobile is so extensive that after a century of expansion it now affects technologies outside of transportation. For instance, the invention of air-conditioning in concert with the highway system encouraged subtropical suburbs. The invention of cheap refrigerated air altered the landscape of the American South and South-west
Where Good Ideas Come from: The Natural History of Innovation
by Steven Johnson · 5 Oct 2010 · 298pp · 81,200 words
important innovations and scientific breakthroughs from the past six hundred years, starting with Gutenberg’s press: everything from Einstein’s theory of relativity to the invention of air conditioning to the birth of the World Wide Web. Plot each breakthrough somewhere in one of the four quadrants of this diagram: Classify innovations that involved
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ideas? To give us some bearings, our anchor tenant in the first quadrant—the market-based individual—is Carrier himself, who single-handedly drove the invention of air conditioning and who had clear commercial aspirations for his device. (Gutenberg belongs there as well.) An example of a networked market innovation would be the vacuum
Supertall: How the World's Tallest Buildings Are Reshaping Our Cities and Our Lives
by Stefan Al · 11 Apr 2022 · 300pp · 81,293 words
TO THE EVOLUTION of air-conditioned behemoths, a small strand of modern architecture advocated for buildings easier on the environment. About two decades after the invention of air-conditioning, in Germany between the wars, architects began designing energy-efficient buildings. Their motivation stemmed from a concern not with cooling but with heating. Germany had
How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
by Steven Johnson · 28 Sep 2014 · 243pp · 65,374 words
to fix a “problem” that was itself a kind of invention. Sometimes new tools reduce natural barriers and limits to human growth, the way the invention of air-conditioning enabled humans to colonize the hotspots of the planet at a scale that would have startled our ancestors just three generations ago. Sometimes the new
Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World
by Steven Johnson · 15 Nov 2016 · 322pp · 88,197 words
to escape the harsh winters of Minnesota, Gruen’s enclosed public space accelerated the mass migration to desert or tropical climates made possible by the invention of air-conditioning. Today, the ten largest shopping malls in the world are all located in non-U.S. or European countries with tropical or desert climates, such
The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance
by Laurie Garrett · 31 Oct 1994 · 1,293pp · 357,735 words
large-scale air-conditioning systems. In the case of Legionella, a new human disease had emerged in 1976, brought from ancient obscurity by the modern invention of air conditioning. At the CDC’s International Legionnaires’ Disease meeting in 1978, several particularly ominous facets of the bug were scrutinized. CDC scientists revealed that the organism
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
by Bill Gates · 16 Feb 2021 · 314pp · 75,678 words
Environment conference, Santorini, Greece, May 2005. But the first known machine: U.S. Department of Energy, “History of Air Conditioning,” www.energy.gov. Also “The Invention of Air Conditioning,” Panama City Living, March 13, 2014, www.panamacityliving.com. Barely more than a century: International Energy Agency, “The Future of Cooling,” www.iea.org. Worldwide
Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America
by Angie Schmitt · 26 Aug 2020 · 274pp · 63,679 words
of the other cities topping Smart Growth America’s list. A good rule of thumb is that if a city or state developed after the invention of air conditioning, it is likely to be a dangerous place to walk. Texas and Georgia, for example, have more than twice as many per capita pedestrian fatalities