In the heat of summer, the idea for the air conditioner was born! Angela Merkel celebrates a birthday. Plus, a Robert Graves poem.
The date is July 17th, Wednesday and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.
As the Northern Hemisphere enters the heat of July, it seems appropriate that on this day in 1902 Willis Carrier in Buffalo, NY submitted drawings for what would be the first air conditioner. He determined that, to work, an Air Conditioner machine must do four things:
- Control temperature
- Control humidity
- Control air circulation, and
- Cleanse the air.
Indeed, a large part of how Carrier’s air conditioner worked had to do with dew point depression. As a resident of Western New York, and more largely the East Coast, Carrier would have known all too well how suffocating a hot AND humid day can be. After fiddling with the contraption for a few years, Carrier received a patent for the first working air conditioner in 1907.
Air conditioners use a a LOT of energy. An article from 2012 estimated that a car’s A/C will use around 3kw or 4 horsepower from the engine therefore decreasing the miles per gallon or kilos per liter ratio. In recent years there has been a call to rethink air conditioners. The use of refrigerants in A/C unit cause damage to the Earth’s ozone layer and emit potent greenhouse gases. A bit ironic that the thing that can keep us cool, also contributes to making the planet hotter.
Today is the birthday of Angela Merkel, current German Chancellor. She is often considered the de facto leader of the European Union.
It may be hard to separate Merkel from European politics now, but there was a time when politics wasn’t on her mind at all – in her younger days she was studying for a doctorate in chemistry.
Merkel was born in 1954 in Hamburg Germany, in what was “West Germany” at the time. Merkel’s father, a Lutheran pastor, moved the family from West Germany to East Germany when Angela was just a baby to take a pastorage outside of Berlin.
When Merkel was a teen, she joined the communist youth movement in East Germany, in order to gain access to higher education. Teens and young people who were not a part of the “voluntary” movement were routinely denied acceptance to colleges and universities.
Merkel attended University in Leipzig where she learned to speak Russian fluently and was a stand-out in her mathematics classes. After graduation, she received an assistant professorship at an engineering school and was asked by the Soviet-controlled government to report on her colleagues. She used the excuse that she would be a lousy spy and terrible at keeping secrets to get out of the request.
She moved along and received a doctorate for her thesis on quantum chemistry at age 31. She continued to work as a researcher and published papers until November 1989.
What happened then? The Berlin Wall came down, and that seemed to be the catalyst for Merkel’s political career. Perhaps having been under the thumb of a surveillance state for so long, Merkel was determined to see the future be free.
Babylon
Robert Graves
The child alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.
Truth and Reason show but dim,
And all’s poetry with him.
Rhyme and music flow in plenty
For the lad of one-and-twenty,
But Spring for him is no more now
Than daisies to a munching cow;
Just a cheery pleasant season,
Daisy buds to live at ease on.
He’s forgotten how he smiled
And shrieked at snowdrops when a child,
Or wept one evening secretly
For April’s glorious misery.
Wisdom made him old and wary
Banishing the Lords of Faery.
Wisdom made a breach and battered
Babylon to bits: she scattered
To the hedges and ditches
All our nursery gnomes and witches.
Lob and Puck, poor frantic elves,
Drag their treasures from the shelves.
Jack the Giant-killer’s gone,
Mother Goose and Oberon,
Bluebeard and King Solomon.
Robin, and Red Riding Hood
Take together to the wood,
And Sir Galahad lies hid
In a cave with Captain Kidd.
None of all the magic hosts,
None remain but a few ghosts
Of timorous heart, to linger on
Weeping for lost Babylon.