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Master Document Template Copyright by Elizabeth Frederick-Rothwell 2019 The Dissertation Committee for Elizabeth Frederick-Rothwell Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Dissertation: Internal Economies: Airs, Bodies, and Building Technologies, 1832-1932 Committee: Michael Holleran, Supervisor Erika Bsumek Richard Cleary Christopher Long Steven Moore Allan Shearer Internal Economies: Airs, Bodies, and Building Technologies, 1832-1932 by Elizabeth Frederick-Rothwell Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2019 Dedication to Ian, for making both the time and the space Abstract Internal Economies: Airs, Bodies, and Building Technologies, 1832-1932 Elizabeth Frederick-Rothwell, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2019 Supervisor: Michael Holleran In this dissertation, I posit that to fully understand the social, political, and economic valences of “air conditioning,” this spatial practice must be understood as a body technology not a building technology. As such, I contend that this technology’s form cannot be read separately from ideas of laboring bodies as constructed in classical liberal economic models and modes of production. Drawing on Foucault’s theory of “biopower,” I interpret British and American space conditioning methods as emerging techniques of governmentality that presuppose a particular system of relations between bodies and indoor environments. In constructing explanations of bodily autonomy in space, scientific and medical experts could invalidate workers’ demands for time and fulfil capitalists’ needs for productive bodies while reducing costs of incapacity. Within this investigation I challenge existing narratives that purport a decisive switch from the “failed” project of nineteenth-century ventilation to the triumphant ascent of twentieth-century refrigerated air conditioning. I argue that this shift from air to heat was not simply a matter of scientific “discovery” or the prerogative of equipment manufacturers, but rather a response to a material crisis in indoor industrial environments, v when new and old forms of aerial contamination exceeded the economic will for its removal. Integral to this study is the discursive production of an individuated “modern” body based on a vitalist model that imagined a self-regulating and self-perpetuating unit that could maintain productivity and disease resistance with little support. Within this paradigm, the qualities of indoor air took on greater significance as preventive strategy. To trace this genealogy of airs and bodies, I examine the networks of political economists, chemists, physiologists, health administrators, engineers, and industrialists that looked first to botanical and then to thermodynamic models to further a vision of a society in which the state had minimal authority to regulate the interests of capital. vi Table of Contents List of Illustrations ......................................................................................................................... ix Introduction: Biopower, Bodies, and Environments .................................................................. 1 Space Conditioning and the Continuity of Technique ............................................................ 14 Biopower ................................................................................................................................. 17 Closed and Open Bodies ......................................................................................................... 24 From Acute to Chronic ........................................................................................................... 25 Chapter 1. Airs and Bodies, Ancient and Modern ................................................................... 30 Ancient Airs and Bodies ......................................................................................................... 32 Hippocratic Airs (Populations) ......................................................................................... 33 Galenic Bodies (Individuals) ............................................................................................ 36 Controlling Bodies, Not Environments ............................................................................ 38 Early Modern Airs and Bodies ............................................................................................... 41 Internal Air: Respiration and Harvey’s Physiology (Individuals) .................................... 46 External Air: Effluvia and Sydenham’s Epidemic Constitution (Populations) ................ 48 Reducible to Practice: Air Measured, Controlled, and Applied ....................................... 50 Chapter 2. Close Places and Enlightened Air ........................................................................... 55 Close Places: Disease and moving air in the eighteenth century ............................................ 55 Of Plagues and Plants: Newtonian Theories of Life and Death ....................................... 59 Of Fevers and Timbers: Moving Air for the Royal Navy ................................................ 76 Of Health and Hygiene: Prevention Cheaper than Cure ................................................... 83 Enlightened Economies of Air and Heat................................................................................. 92 Comfort, Necessity, Economy .......................................................................................... 95 Dissenting Economies: Joseph Priestley’s Air ................................................................. 96 Breathing Economies: Antoine Lavoisier’s Heat ........................................................... 104 Aerial Economies: Thomas Beddoes’s Pneumatic Institution ....................................... 111 Chapter 3. The Factory Question: Confined Air, Illness, and Industrialization ................. 114 The “Factory Question” ........................................................................................................ 117 Factory Fevers, Factory Air, Factory Acts ..................................................................... 119 Factory Constitutions, Factory Consumption ................................................................. 123 Chadwick’s Answer .............................................................................................................. 125 The Internal Economy .................................................................................................... 129 The Removal of Many Agents: Thackrah’s Health and Longevity ................................ 135 Economical Society: The Royal Institution and Technological Containment ................ 140 American Air ........................................................................................................................ 147 Hygienic Relations: Factory Ventilation and the Ten-hours Movement ........................ 151 Forcing Houses: School Ventilation in the Sanitary Age ............................................... 159 Chapter 4. The Labor Question: Air, Heat, Consumption, Fatigue ..................................... 188 The “Labor Question” ........................................................................................................... 194 The Three Miseries ......................................................................................................... 197 Exposure, Occupation, and Hygiene .............................................................................. 201 vii The State of Science: Institutions and the Redefined Risks of Air ....................................... 204 The Sources of Heat ....................................................................................................... 213 The Double Meaning of Dust ......................................................................................... 224 The Resources of Science: Billings’s Legacy in Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth” ......... 240 Chapter 5. The Philanthropy of Engineering: Laboratories and the Heat of Work ........... 245 Laboratory 1: The New York Commission on Ventilation’s “Experimental Plant” ............. 251 The Cash Value of Ventilation: C.-E.A. Winslow’s Revitalization of Public Health .... 253 Engineering Society: Dwight D. Kimball’s Exhibition of Safety .................................. 255 Fatigue and Efficiency: Frederic S. Lee’s Metabolism of Work .................................... 257 War, Munitions, and the Double Meaning of Fatigue .................................................... 267 Laboratory 2: The Bureau of Mines / ASHVE “Psychrometric Chamber” .......................... 270 Comfort Lines and Compressors .................................................................................... 282 Industrial Resistance to Fatigue ..................................................................................... 284 Laboratory 3: Harvard’s Ventilation and Illumination Lab / Fatigue Lab ............................ 286 The Steady State: Haldane’s New Physiology and Homeostasis at Harvard ................. 290 Epilogue: Hi, How Are You? Are you WELL? ...................................................................... 295 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 297 viii List of Illustrations Figure 1.1
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