"Papa's got a brand new bag" but Mama's got a brand new blog
It’s the dog days of summer, although to be honest, I’m not sure of the precise calendar designation of the ‘dog days,’ other than they’re in August. I hate August. In fact, I pretty much despise summer. ‘Her Sweetness’ told me I should never mention this in ‘polite society’ because people will think I’m nuts. Heck, anyone who knows me already has a pretty good handle on that. I’ve found a small legion of folks out there, though, who agree with me on this. Not the ‘nuts’ part, but the ‘down with summer’ part.
Willis Haviland Carrier is my personal god. What a guy! If it wasn’t for Willis’most wonderful invention, I wouldn’t be sitting here typing. I’d be lying on the floor next to the dog, panting away and complaining loudly into his ear. He doesn’t care, this dog…he’s deaf. Really!
I used to weather the summer by hitting the 20 x 50 foot pool in Her Sweetness’ back yard as often as possible or going to the glorious Jersey shore, along with the ‘sonnys,’but that was about twenty years and 50 pounds ago. Right at the moment I wouldn’t appear in a bathing suit even if I was the only one home. No sirree!
So that leaves me with Dr. Carrier’s marvelous invention (3 of ‘em in fact…there were 4, but younger sonny has appropriated one for his own abode) and I genuflect regularly. Older sonny is the proud owner of his own contraption. From all accounts Willis Carrier was reported to be a stellar person…very nice, intelligent and industrious…and it can be said that he truly made life worth living for most of us. Dear Chemist Husband likes him because he was a scentist and liked to figure things out and make swell inventions. You may know him by his foremost contribution, the air conditioner. But he was responsible for far more than that. It started with the air conditioner though…
Well, actually, it started with a frustrated printer in Brooklyn, in 1902. Humidity and temperature variations kept messing up his color print reproductions and ruined his print runs, which made him lose his ‘cool.’ Enter our hero..! Although he couldn’t do anything about the nature of the paper (maybe he could, but he didn’t), he certainly did do something about controlling the environmental conditions in the printer’s factory. Must have been because he was an engineer. Do ya s’pose? They called him ‘The Chief.’
Another victory was over wet noodles. That’s right. A disgruntled pasta maker declared war on the moisture in his noodles because they wouldn’t dry out properly so he called in The Chief and said something like “what can you do wit dis a here pasta noodles what’s not a dryin’ like a it should?” (I don’t really know if he actually talked like that…) The rest was history. Now we’re all fat and complaining of ‘carbs.’ But you can’t blame Willis Carrier for that. He’s dead. He died in New York City in 1950, at 73. The pasta guy liked him though, and declared him a real winner.
For twenty years, air conditioning was used to cool machines and equipment, not people. He wasn’t the first person to discover ‘air conditioning’ but his invention of the ‘centrifugal chiller’ in 1921 was the first practical method of conditioning air in large spaces. Finally hotel and theater owners started calling on Dr. Carrier and one thing just led to another. Imagine going to a closed up theater in the summer to watch a 2-hour film. Pshew!
Dr. Carrier’s device has led to humungous supermarkets full of exotic fresh food, refrigerated trucks to haul it in, freezers to keep it in, habitable skyscrapers, comfortable hospitals, more efficient operating rooms and morgues (ugh!), climate controlled museums which protect fine art instead of contributing to its demise and lots of other industries which became possible and flourished, thanks to the inventiveness of one Willis Haviland Carrier.
Ole Willis was always thinking and hitting the books and kept on educating himself until his demise. He was married 3 times (twice a widower) and had 2 adopted children, neither of whom survive. I think he was wonderful. I wonder if I could be posthumously adopted by him. I know his birthday…it’s November 26th. We make it a day of celebration in our house. Some folks called him a genius. I believe that!
Well, excuse me…I have to go ‘chill out.’ That is, if I can get the dog to move away from 'the contraption.' Ciao, baby…
Willis Haviland Carrier is my personal god. What a guy! If it wasn’t for Willis’most wonderful invention, I wouldn’t be sitting here typing. I’d be lying on the floor next to the dog, panting away and complaining loudly into his ear. He doesn’t care, this dog…he’s deaf. Really!
I used to weather the summer by hitting the 20 x 50 foot pool in Her Sweetness’ back yard as often as possible or going to the glorious Jersey shore, along with the ‘sonnys,’but that was about twenty years and 50 pounds ago. Right at the moment I wouldn’t appear in a bathing suit even if I was the only one home. No sirree!
So that leaves me with Dr. Carrier’s marvelous invention (3 of ‘em in fact…there were 4, but younger sonny has appropriated one for his own abode) and I genuflect regularly. Older sonny is the proud owner of his own contraption. From all accounts Willis Carrier was reported to be a stellar person…very nice, intelligent and industrious…and it can be said that he truly made life worth living for most of us. Dear Chemist Husband likes him because he was a scentist and liked to figure things out and make swell inventions. You may know him by his foremost contribution, the air conditioner. But he was responsible for far more than that. It started with the air conditioner though…
Well, actually, it started with a frustrated printer in Brooklyn, in 1902. Humidity and temperature variations kept messing up his color print reproductions and ruined his print runs, which made him lose his ‘cool.’ Enter our hero..! Although he couldn’t do anything about the nature of the paper (maybe he could, but he didn’t), he certainly did do something about controlling the environmental conditions in the printer’s factory. Must have been because he was an engineer. Do ya s’pose? They called him ‘The Chief.’
Another victory was over wet noodles. That’s right. A disgruntled pasta maker declared war on the moisture in his noodles because they wouldn’t dry out properly so he called in The Chief and said something like “what can you do wit dis a here pasta noodles what’s not a dryin’ like a it should?” (I don’t really know if he actually talked like that…) The rest was history. Now we’re all fat and complaining of ‘carbs.’ But you can’t blame Willis Carrier for that. He’s dead. He died in New York City in 1950, at 73. The pasta guy liked him though, and declared him a real winner.
For twenty years, air conditioning was used to cool machines and equipment, not people. He wasn’t the first person to discover ‘air conditioning’ but his invention of the ‘centrifugal chiller’ in 1921 was the first practical method of conditioning air in large spaces. Finally hotel and theater owners started calling on Dr. Carrier and one thing just led to another. Imagine going to a closed up theater in the summer to watch a 2-hour film. Pshew!
Dr. Carrier’s device has led to humungous supermarkets full of exotic fresh food, refrigerated trucks to haul it in, freezers to keep it in, habitable skyscrapers, comfortable hospitals, more efficient operating rooms and morgues (ugh!), climate controlled museums which protect fine art instead of contributing to its demise and lots of other industries which became possible and flourished, thanks to the inventiveness of one Willis Haviland Carrier.
Ole Willis was always thinking and hitting the books and kept on educating himself until his demise. He was married 3 times (twice a widower) and had 2 adopted children, neither of whom survive. I think he was wonderful. I wonder if I could be posthumously adopted by him. I know his birthday…it’s November 26th. We make it a day of celebration in our house. Some folks called him a genius. I believe that!
Well, excuse me…I have to go ‘chill out.’ That is, if I can get the dog to move away from 'the contraption.' Ciao, baby…
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