Enjoying this book but I have to take issue with the assertion on page 207 that a team of scientists, including explorer John Wesley Powell, built the first air conditioner in an effort to alleviate the sufferings of President Garfield in 1881. This statement flies in the face of what we learned in Apalachicola - that Dr. John Gorrie patented the first air conditioner in 1851 with the same U.S. government. If Washington D.C. was such a dismal, disease-ridden swamp, why wasn’t air conditioning installed in the White House any earlier?
Deja vu
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