The Invention of the Automobile Air Conditioner

The Invention of the Air Conditioner

Here's a little fact for car buffs, or just to dazzle your friends.

The four Goldberg brothers, Lowell, Norman, Hiram, and Maxwell, invented and developed the first automobile air conditioner. On July 17, 1946, the temperature in Detroit was 97° F.
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The four brothers walked into old man Henry Ford's office and sweet-talked his secretary into telling him that four gentlemen were there with the most exciting innovation in the auto industry since the electric starter. Henry was curious and invited them into his office. They refused and instead asked that he come out to the parking lot to their car.

They persuaded him to get into the car, which was about 130° F inside, turned on the air conditioner, and cooled the car off almost immediately.

The old man got very excited and invited them back to the office, where he offered them $3 million for the patent. The brothers refused, saying they would settle for $2 million, but they wanted the recognition by having a label The Goldberg Air Conditioner on the dashboard of each car in which it was installed.

There was no way that old man Ford was going to put the Goldberg's name on two million Fords. They haggled back and forth for about two hours and finally agreed on $4 million and that just their first names would be shown.

And so to this day, all Ford air conditioners show Lo, Norm, Hi, and Max on the controls.

Wife asked is that a true story...
Wife father name was Hiram, so he was on the dashboard too

Good story Lang, except Packards had aircon in 1942

You're 46 days early.............LOL

Overnite you are so used to my BS you credited me with jon-d's story.

Of course the real first aircon was Julius Caesar's chariot. He had a big block of ice and 3 virgins waving fans over it in a sidecar.

Lang

It's tru Lang. Not BS.

When I was a kid, one night we saw Homicide being filmed. When I told the teacher the next day, he said "you know is not true". I went nuts, "of course it's true, I saw it."
I think I won that argument..... or maybe he gave up??

www.snopes.com/fact-check/cool-millions/

Archaeologists who once conducted excavations in the capital of Carthage at the Circus there discovered that the Punians used an advanced system to cool horses and chariots.

The key to the discovery was that the structure used a waterproof mortar mixed with broken and powdered ceramics. The mortar was used in an oblong object located in the centre of the arena, the so-called spins around which rivals made laps. This building was usually richly decorated with columns, ornaments and statues. Among these facilities, there were sprinklers (sparsores), which drew water from tanks located underground. It is possible that chariot drivers like this could count on a little cooling in the hot climate. However, as scientists say, “ancient air conditioning” may have been primarily intended to cool the wheels of chariots and horses.


The Carthage Circus was the second-largest circus in the Roman Empire, 500 meters long (80 meters shorter than the Circus Maximus in Rome ) and could probably hold over 100,000 spectators. The ancients were extremely fascinated by chariot racing, a sport as popular as football is today.


As it turns out, the cooling technique was also used in other circuses in the Empire, including at the Maxentius circus near Rome, on Via Appia.

Lang I do realise you were only the messenger and it was tongue in cheek.

Overnite credited the aircon story to me and now Andrew is talking about me, messengers and tongue in cheek. I have either lost posts or lost the plot.

Jon-d told the story. This "dad joke" has been around for years and always worth retelling. I certainly got a laugh.

In Hayseed's Snopes link isn't it interesting that the "Truth Authority" after saying it is a joke and not true, uses its platform to turn a simple joke into subjective racial/religious barrow pushing.