Florida air-conditioning pioneer first dismissed as a crank

Jeremy Roundtree, Park Ranger for the Florida Park Services, explains the operation of John Gorrie’s (portrait L) ice machine in the Gorrie Museum in Apalachicola, Florida.

The model on display is a 3/4 inch scale model. The original machine is at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. Gorrie (1803-1855) is today considered the pioneer of the air-conditioner.

As a medical doctor, he believed yellow fever was caused by the heat coming from the swamps and treated the illness by cooling the rooms of his patients. He did so thanks to his own invention, a mechanic machine that artificially made ice through the expansion and condensation of air. It received an official US patent in 1851. — AFP