What’s the first thing you think of when I say “Malaria?”
Probably Africa, right?
Then possibly central Asia, the islands of the pacific, and maybe the northern jungles of South America.
And if you think that’s where our story begins, you’d be wrong.
Now what if I said “West Nile?” Or “Zika?”
Immediately, we all say Florida.
And that, my friends, is where malaria and mosquitoes started our journey toward the modern air conditioner.
Yes, malaria in Florida. And it’s there that a physician named John Gorrie. Gorrie was a bit of a malaria expert, or rather to say he was determined to solve the malaria crisis.
The problem was that it was still unknown as to what caused malaria, yet today we know that disease is transferred through the blood by insects like mosquitoes. There’s your connection!
Gorrie theorized that cooling the air in rooms with sick patients might be the answer to this epidemic. In 1842, he had his chance to test his theory.
It started simple with a bucket of ice, and the machine that he would eventually patent in 1851 worked by removing heat from water until it turned in a solid block of ice. It’s this heat removal process that became a key component to the invention of modern air conditioning.