TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation?

Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation?

Garrett Wollman (wollman@csail.mit.edu)
Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:51:37 UTC

In article <telecom25.258.10@telecom-digest.org>,
hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:

> I don't know how working people survived without air conditioning,

Many larger buildings had (what was then considered to be) air
conditioning. Skyscrapers prior to the "sealed glass box" era were
designed with vertical air shafts running the entire height of the
building. On each floor or pair of floors, an air-handler would pull
air out of the shaft into each floor through a system of ventilation
ducts; it would be exhausted through the windows.

I've been in one of the vent shafts at the Empire State Building, and
I've seen the top of one at Boston's Prudential Tower. After central
air was installed at Empire, the vent shafts gained a new purpose as
communications corridors, particularly connecting the broadcast
facilities on the 79th, 80th, 81st, 84th, and 85th floors.

-GAWollman

--


Garrett A. Wollman    | As the Constitution endures, persons in every
wollman@csail.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own
Opinions not those    | search for greater freedom.
of MIT or CSAIL.      | - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)

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