WHATEVER BECAME OF....
Some years ago, about twenty - now that I bother to tally them up - I remember reading some glowing accounts of a new product which was being introduced to the always-eager world of air conditioning consumers.
It could have been called Polar Aire, I suppose, because it was a basic concept swiped from Mother Nature who outfitted the polar bear with hair that is actually like a slender tube leading from the black skin surface to the clean air. The result: a cooler polar bear. Wafted about by body action of the bear and by the wind and turmoil of an active lifestyle, each hair acted as a channel moving hot air to cooler areas.
The inventor had duplicated the structure of the polar bear hair and mounted a four-by-four foot collection of such air-hairs in a pad in the roof of the house where they would cause hot air from the attic to be released into the air above the house. A small fan in the edge of the hairy array, urged it to do so faster.
It was touted in the "New Products" section of some of the many trade publications of the industry for a few weeks, then, apparently shunted side and forgotten. I bring it up now and then and people are really surprised. They have very little trouble accepting the fact that the structure of polar bear hair is rather unusual and might well been used in air-conditioning, but they cannot bring themselves to believe that such a white bear has black skin.
By this time I expected to see our rooftops bristling with bear hair, by someone must have decided it was not good for Santa's reindeer to graze upon such artificial stuff. It is amazing how we can adapt ideas from Nature. Nettles and burrs became paper clips and Velcro cloth; even air conditioning apparatus – early Indian inhabitants of the Luray, Virginia area are said to have inserted sections of hollow cane through the mountain walls to channel the cool air from the many underground caverns of the area... 57-degree, year round temperatures - into their hillside caves, shelters and and hogans.
A.L.M. April 22, 2003 [c579wds]
