While moving heat via machinery to provide air conditioning is a relatively modern invention, the cooling of buildings is not. Wealthy ancient Romans circulated aqueduct water through walls to cool their luxurious houses.[citation needed]
The 2nd century Chinese inventor Ding Huan (fl. 180) of the Han Dynasty invented a rotary fan for air conditioning, with seven wheels 3 m (10 ft) in diameter and manually powered.[2] In 747, Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712'762) of the Tang Dynasty (618'907) had the Cool Hall (Liang Tian) built in the imperial palace, which the Tang Yulin describes as having water-powered fan wheels for air conditioning as well as rising jet streams of water from fountains.[3] During air conditioning the subsequent Song Dynasty (960'1279), written sources mentioned the air conditioning rotary fan as even more widely used.[4]
Medieval Persia had buildings that used cisterns and wind towers to cool buildings during the hot season: cisterns (large open pools in central courtyards, not underground tanks) collected rain water; wind towers had windows that could catch wind and internal vanes air conditioning to direct the airflow down into the building, usually over the cistern and out through a downwind cooling tower.[5] Cistern water evaporated, cooling the air in the building.
Ventilators were invented in medieval Egypt and were widely used in many houses throughout Cairo during the Middle Ages. These ventilators were later described in detail by Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi in 1200, who reported that almost every house in Cairo has a ventilator, and that they cost anywhere from 1 to 500 dinars depending on their sizes and shapes. Most ventilators in the city were oriented towards the Qibla, as was the city in general.[6]
In the 1600s Cornelius Drebbel demonstrated "turning Summer into Winter" for James I of England by adding salt to water.[7]
In 1820, British scientist and inventor Michael Faraday discovered that compressing and liquefying ammonia could chill air when the liquefied ammonia was allowed to evaporate. In 1842, Florida physician John Gorrie used compressor technology to create ice, which he used air conditioning to cool air for his patients in his hospital in Apalachicola, Florida.[8] He hoped eventually to use his ice-making machine to regulate the temperature of buildings. He even envisioned centralized air conditioning that could cool entire cities.[9] Though his prototype leaked and performed irregularly, Gorrie was granted a patent in 1851 for his ice-making machine. His hopes for its success vanished soon afterwards when his chief financial backer died; Gorrie did not get the money he needed to develop the machine. According to his biographer, Vivian M. Sherlock, he blamed the "Ice King", Frederic Tudor, for his failure, suspecting that Tudor had launched a smear campaign against his invention. Dr. Gorrie died impoverished in 1855 and the idea of air conditioning faded away for 50 years.
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