Tuesday, January 12, 2010

minute maid


In the mid 1980s, I attended a middle school named for one of the contributors to the development of air conditioning, the irony is that the third floor of this school where my math class was, would often reach temperatures in the upper 90s in september. The name of the school was John Gorrie. The school has since been decomisioned and is awaiting either demolition or repurposing.
In 1820, British scientist and inventor Michael Faraday discovered that compressing and liquefying ammonia could chill air when the liquefied ammonia was allowed to evaporate. In 1842, Florida physician John Gorrie used compressor technology to create ice, which he used to cool air for his patients in his hospital in Apalachicola, Florida.[9] He hoped eventually to use his ice-making machine to regulate the temperature of buildings. He even envisioned centralized air conditioning that could cool entire cities.[10] Though his prototype leaked and performed irregularly, Gorrie was granted a patent in 1851 for his ice-making machine. His hopes for its success vanished soon afterwards when his chief financial backer died; Gorrie did not get the money he needed to develop the machine. According to his biographer, Vivian M. Sherlock, he blamed the "Ice King", Frederic Tudor, for his failure, suspecting that Tudor had launched a smear campaign against his invention. Dr. Gorrie died impoverished in 1855 and the idea of air conditioning faded away for 50 years.From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia link here

2 comments:

Russell Maycumber said...

The school building John Gorrie middle junior high was sold to a company called John Gorrie LLC in 2009. I believe they had developed an old school property in the San Marco neighborhood of Jacksonville. They seem to specialize in turning these buildings into "Work housing". I remember having a particularly disturbing dream of my gym teacher from Gorrie. Her eyes were shockingly blue and always a lil bloodshot. My dream made her eye into this open sore of ocular fibers and blood vessels.

Russell Maycumber said...

update-The school has been completely renovated into upscale condos, mirroring a historically unprecedented rebound for that neighborhood in general. Probably related to this observation of growth in Jacksonville by Forbes magazine. http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/02/07/the-cities-winning-the-battle-for-the-biggest-growth-sector-in-the-u-s/

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