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Ever since our ancestors mastered fire, humans have been able to warm themselves. Cooling down when it's hot has been more challenging.
The eccentric Roman emperor Elagabulus sent slaves to bring snow down from the mountains and pile it in his garden, where breezes would carry the cooler air inside.
[...] Needless to say, this was not a scalable solution. At least, not until the 19th century, when Boston entrepreneur Frederic Tudor amassed an unlikely fortune doing something similar.
He took blocks of ice from frozen New England lakes in winter, insulated them in sawdust, and shipped them to warmer climes for summer.
Until artificial ice-making took off, mild New England winters caused panic about an "ice famine".
Air conditioning as we know it began in 1902, but it had nothing to do with human comfort.
New York's Sackett & Wilhelms Lithographing and Printing Company became frustrated with varying humidity levels when trying to print in colour.
The same paper had to be printed four times in four colours, and if the humidity changed between print runs, the paper would slightly expand or contract. Even a millimetre's misalignment looked awful.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 06 2017, @10:45PM
This is all true, though there's an even simpler summary metric: dew point [wikipedia.org], which is essentially a measure of absolute humidity.
I've never quite understood why modern air conditioning systems don't adopt a "constant dewpoint" setting, particularly in humid climates, which would actually correlate more closely with human comfort than temperature (or relative humidity, for that matter). 70 degrees F can be very uncomfortable at 100% humidity (particularly if you attempt to do anything), but 85 F might not be so bad at 30% humidity.
If you could just set your air conditioner for "dewpoint 55F" or whatever (some might be willing to go a bit higher or need a bit lower), you'd mostly be comfortable all the time in most climates. (Dewpoint isn't that precise, but it would be a better fit to subjective comfort level than temperature.)
Instead, people end up fiddling with the settings, particularly in humid climates where you might need an A/C setting of 70F or even lower to feel comfortable in spring or fall, but an A/C setting of 80F might be comfortable in the heat of summer (since the A/C will work more with hotter temperatures outside, thereby removing more humidity indoors and increasing comfort even without as much temperature drop). It would also do more to minimize the "transitions" that some people find uncomfortable, where you need to wear shorts and sleeveless shirts to feel comfortable outside, but end up putting on a sweater in your office building because they keep the A/C at a constant low temperature. With dewpoint as your metric, the indoor temperature will generally rise a bit as it gets hotter outside, thereby lessening the "shock" many people often feel going in or out in hot climates.