Air conditioning has become one of those things that many people can not live without. Over the years there has been a branding of this one time luxury as a major selling point for the entire world when it comes to housing and so on. This was not the way it always was in all truth. In the early days this kind of thing was virtually unheard of and only the super rich could afford to be cool during the scorching days of summer. This was a deal that came about when a person who lived in the southern part of the United States was wanting a way to be cool in the high humidity. At the time there was nothing in place to deal with the overly muggy conditions of the region and he set out to change all of that.

The inspiration for air conditioning came from what we now know as swamp coolers. These first edition cooling units were nothing more then blocks of ice that were set out to melt with an electric fan behind them. The idea was that the air from the fan would blow through the mist of the melting ice and provide a refreshing blast of cold air to the person sitting closest to it. One can imagine what kind of problems this caused in a family environment as the entire group struggled to see who would sit in front of the cooler. It was also noteworthy that electricity was still an immense luxury at the time, being late in the 1800's as a matter of fact. So many people had no way to power the fan. To curb this problem several companies at the time came out with hand crank fans that would be powered by a hand crank that rotated the fan blades many times for each turn of the handle.

Using the same principle the gentleman from the south who was from a family of wealth and privilege decided that he could do better with the cooling of air to make people more comfortable. He set to work and tried many different things before settling on the new element, freon, that was being used to power the new ice boxes of the day. This turned out to be the best thing in the world for his new invention and he quickly developed the system that is still very much in use to this day.