Editor's note: This story was originally published by .
In the Northeast and some part of the Midwest, the leaves have started changing colors, heralding the season of pumpkins, sweaters, and the smell of woodsmoke. But in some parts of the country, the heat hasn鈥檛 let up. In cities like Dallas, Phoenix, and Miami, temperatures were up in the high 80s and low 90s this week鈥攁nd with climate change, the U.S. is only getting hotter.
But humans have come up with an ingenious way to keep the heat at bay: air conditioning.
Widely considered one of the , the technology has transformed how and where people live鈥攁nd it鈥檚 prevented countless deaths. But it comes at a cost, and if we鈥檙e going to keep up with a warming climate, we鈥檙e going to need some other tricks to stay cool.
Further Reading
- Read Salvatore Basile鈥檚 book on the history of air conditioning, .
- Check out Gail Cooper鈥檚 book, .
- Read a turn-of-the-century engineer鈥檚 report on installation at the World鈥檚 Fair in St. Louis, published in the Journal of Ice and Refrigeration.
- Find more information on .
- A study about
- A look back at the from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
- Find out between neighborhoods, corresponding to differences in racial demographics and wealth. (Take a look at these . cities and some of the !)
- Find further details on the materials that
This story was produced by , in collaboration with 漏 2024 外网天堂鈥檚 . We had production help from . All of our music and sound design is by . We had research and fact-checking help from . Charles Bergquist was the voice of refrigeration engineers from 1904.
Special thanks to , professor at the University of Illinois and director of , for explaining to us how air conditioners work; , assistant professor of architecture at McGill; , lecturer in geography, urban planning and environment at the University of Wolverhampton; , professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine; and Adam Kloppe, a public historian with the Missouri Historical Society.
