When was air conditioning invented?
In some ways air conditioning was invented on the day that mankind first began to suffer from the effects of heat and humidity. The desire to maintain cool and fresh air has been inside us from the earliest times. In the very beginning, it was not totally for comfort. In hot and humid air, the human body loses excessive amounts of necessary water. The ability to replace the lost moisture was a matter of life and death. The ancient civilizations developed some rudimentary air conditioning systems. The Egyptians ran cool water through the walls of some of their homes. Another method was the placing of a cistern filled with water in the path of incoming ventilation. These systems were the first attempts at air conditioning for the sake of comfort, and were available to only the very rich.
