Car Air Conditioning History | Comfort Zone HVAC Service
November 7, 2016

We handle an enormous amount of air conditioning services each year. Even during the fall and winter, we’re on call to help people with installing new ACs, upgrading them, or helping homes make plans for future hot weather. The mild winters here in Georgia mean that air conditioning concerns pop up at unexpected times. After all, look at the current weather for November… we’re still experiencing highs during the day in the 70s.

At this time of the year, we thought you might appreciate a story about the early days of air conditioning. It’s one most people don’t know much about… the car cooler.

Evaporative Cooling for Cars

You probably have an air conditioner in your automobile that helps keep regular driving comfortable during the long hot months. But from the 1930s to the early 1960s, when air conditioning was becoming more and more popular for homes, cars were missing out. There simply wasn’t any way to fit one of the bulky refrigerated air conditioner units into a car and make the car gas-efficient.

Then inventors came up with a solution: a car cooler that attached to the window. This device looks like a rocket engine from a 1950s science-fiction movie, but was able to supply cool temperatures in a car without the requirements of a refrigerated system. Instead, it worked through evaporative cooling, which is the cooling of air by running it over cold water, triggering evaporation that leeches heat from the air. As a car drives along with a car cooler, air enters through the front grill, passes over ice that the driver poured into the cooler, and then is directed into the car through the window. Cooling! At least until the ice melts.

Car coolers are now parts of automotive museums. Evaporative coolers remain in use for some homes in dryer parts of the country. Here in humid Georgia, you’ll want to rely on the power of solid split system refrigerated air conditioner. Call on us when you need the best in AC service—and leave the car cooler as a quaint picture of the vanished but not forgotten automotive culture of the Space Age.

Comfort Zone Heating & Cooling serves Roswell and Cumming, GA. Call our customer service specialists at 770-213-COOL (2665) and let us know how we can help.

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