How temperature control changed the world
The commercial HVAC will change the world and it already has. That might sound like a strange idea but bear with me. It’s certainly true and, more than that, it’s true in ways that might surprise you. Think of all of the inventions that have changed the face of the way we live in society. Plumbing, electricity, cars, the internet. For example, the world was much much different before the invention of the internet. Most of us adults can still remember a time when the internet was a novelty. A toy. Those of us with access to it could browse a few sites for entertainment but we couldn’t quite learn anything from it. It was a common practice back in the day to look up whether certain companies had websites or certain movies. It might sound silly now but we would spend hours looking up fast food restaurants or bookstores because they might have a fledgling websites with fun or weird information. Tangents aside, what does this have to do with the commercial hvac or hvac companies or hvac contractors? Well, the answer to that is both fun and complicated. It involves a sense of power and urgency and the innovation and curiosity of people who just wanted a bit of comfort in their lives. Let’s go back in history a bit to see how these two ideas interact.
- Headed back in time and space
Before we can understand the importance of the hvac service and the history of social change, we need to go back to a time and a place that might surprise you. Let’s visit Vegas in the twenties and thirties. Specifically, let’s visit the place that Vegas was going to be because, during that time, it was hardly there. Now, you might be asking yourself what that means exactly? Vegas and other southwestern cities seem like such permanent fixtures that it’s hard to imagine them ever not being there. But, rest assured, before the fifties, many of those cities simply didn’t exist. Picture it for a moment. Not a single commerical hvac. More than that, not a single large building or fountain. It was a desert, perhaps with a small outpost and nothing else. It was a dust bowl full of snakes and mountains, waiting empty under the range of the sky for someone to come. It was natural, to be sure, but it was wildest kind of natural. People simply couldn’t live there because of the extreme heat.
Knowing what changed
It wasn’t just this way in the southwest or in Vegas either. It was like this for much of the country below Georgia. Before the fifties, it was simply infeasible for large scale communication or towns in difficult and hot areas. In the south, it was the heat and the swamps. People, native peoples and hardy Americans, did live in these areas. That’s not say these places were desolate wastelands devoid of a single living soul. That would have made the civil war pretty strange, right? But there were hardly any cities in those regions. Even Los Angeles was small and pathetic in those days. The urban king of films and culture didn’t start thriving until the thirties and even then it took time for it to take off. For much of the early film industry, New Jersey was the place to film. There was even a few early studios in Florida before hurricanes drove them out. Without the commercial hvac and the personal, home hvac, it was impossible for these places to thrive.
The big change in temperature
During the forties and fifties, this all changed. Big time. At first, the changes were small. The towns and outposts like Vegas were introduced to various small scale temperature changes like air conditioning and heating that would allow more people to stay there for longer periods of time. Yes, heating, too, because nights in the deserts can get very cold! These commercial hvac providers eventually expanded and improved their designs so that they could cool and heat whole large buildings which allowed for large scale construction in the long term. It truly was a revolution in urban development.