7. In 1955 it was predicted that just eight years later people would carry around portable air conditioners on warm days to cool their surroundings
Air conditioning itself is not a new invention, dating to prehistoric times in which ice and snow were used by our ancient ancestors for the purposes of cooling. This practice continued well into the 19th century, where ice harvesting and transportation remained an important industry for European elites who stored their frozen coolants for later use. Among the earliest modern techniques of air conditioning, Benjamin Franklin contributed to these initial experiments in 1758 by determining that evaporation could be used to lower the temperature of an object below the freezing point of water. Franklin, however, was scared by his findings, announcing that “one may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer’s day”. These endeavors culminated in the first large-scale electrical air conditioner, created by inventor Willis Carrier in 1902, with the introduction of such machines in a residential capacity vital to the great migration into the Sun Belt in the United States during the 1920s.
By the 1950s, with the advent of refrigeration, air conditioning became a common feature of comfort in homes, workplaces, and the accelerating automobile industry. However, although portable air conditioners did eventually take off they most certainly did not in the form assumed by this advert from 1955. Asserting that just eight years later, in 1963, people would carry around miniature air conditioners to cool the air around their person, the advertisement patently overstated the advantages of the technology over the far simpler and cheap fan. Equally, the advert overlooked the possibility of air conditioners being included in the surroundings themselves, such as on public transport, in shops, or at places of work or home, as they indeed have been in recent years.