The mid-summer heat and humidity in the northeast was becoming oppressive to people not used to it and the idea of finding big blocks of ice to cool the place had problems of it's own.
Being a far-sighted kind of person, old Edward Morse decided that he would invent a device to heat and ventilate his home for free and he would use the sun to do it.
His mind was made up and he wasted no time. He headed out to his workshop to hit the old drawing board.
Since hitting it didn't yield any results, he decided that he would just use it to put his ideas on paper.
It is alleged that to help him visualize the problem he made a rough drawing of the outside of his house. As he was drawing away he noticed that there were a ton of windows and doors in his home, and they were hot when he wanted cool, and cool when he wanted hot.
As the possibilities for using the sun and these windows for cooling when he wanted it and heating when he wanted to ran through his eager mind he came up with the idea to build a box to fit the window opening. To bend some sheet metal into a zig zag shape that just fit into the box and to paint it black.
He then put a piece of glass on the outside of the box, and an air chamber with an operating vent to send the heat in or to ventilate it outside behind the black metal collectors.
When it was installed and working I bet he just sat in his house and smiled as the cool breeze blew across his face.
A real modern day wonder, eh?
Nope! Mr. Morse was awarded his Letters of Patent for this device on September 6, 1881.
