Posted on: Wednesday, July 17, 2002
Hawai'i trails nation's use of home-cooling systems
| • | Air conditioning turns 100 today |
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer
Hawai'i households lag when it comes to cooling off electronically.
While nearly three-quarters of American households have air conditioners, only 44 percent of O'ahu homes beat the heat via refrigerants, and Maui and the Big Island log in with a mere 32 percent and 12 percent respectively, according to Hawaiian Electric Co. statistics.
In the mid-1920s McInerny's store installed air conditioning at its shop on Merchant Street.
But frigid indoor air actually got popular in Hawai'i just as it did elsewhere — in movie houses. In 1936, the Hawaii Theatre was the first such venue to boast that "Manufactured Weather ... Insures Comfort" via its new Carrier air conditioning, but not before the W.A. Ramsay company — which installed the theater's cooling system — laid claim to being the first place in Hawai'i with air-conditioned offices.
According to "Firsts, And Almost Firsts, in Hawai'i," by Robert Schmitt and Ronn Ronck, the air-conditioned home didn't appear in Hawai'i until 1938 — nearly a quarter of a century after air conditioning was invented.
And even now home air isn't exactly a hot item in the Islands.
