HPAC 2021: Our Monthly Quiz

The heating, piping, and air conditioning industry has been a fixture of ‘civilized’ life on Planet Earth for well over a century, and the focus of this venerable publication since 1929. The inventive and problem-solving work of engineers, manufacturers, and building owners have continuously helped to expand the impact of the HVACR industry beyond creature comforts and food and data storage to life and death issues like greenhouse gas reductions and, especially today, virus mitigation.

 

With all that in mind, HPAC Engineering here welcomes you to join us on a fun monthly ride through the milestones, innovations, people, places, problems and products that have come to define this industry and your work. Hopefully, there may even be a chuckle or two along the way. So, here goes, and see below for your chances to win a $50 Amazon gift card.

Photo Credit: Thinkstock
Since most of you will be viewing this quiz on or around July 4th, let’s take a brief American History detour, still focused (broadly) on engineering, of course. In the fall of 1780, Gen. Benedict Arnold’s plot to betray George Washington and hand over this future site of America’s first engineering school was exposed. Which place figured at the center of this dramatic treachery?

Harvard University

Princeton University

West Point

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Photo credit: Getty Images

On July 4th, ground was broken for the Erie Canal at Rome, NY. An engineering marvel then labeled as the Eighth Wonder of the World, it would stretch more than 360 miles and connect the Great Lakes to the Hudson River. What year did this construction begin?

1803

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1826

1850

Photo credit: ErieCanal.org

In 1883, the Edison Electric Illuminating Co. opened the world’s first three-wire electrical substation in this Pennsylvania town. The date was July 4th, and Thomas Edison, himself, attended. Which town?

Scranton

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Shamokin

State College

Photo credit: IEEE

The term “air conditioning” was first used in a 1906 speech to the American Cotton Manufacturers Association in Asheville NC. Already a founding partner of the utility later to become Duke Power, the speaker was an engineer who would go on to earn more than 60 patents for humidity control and ventilating equipment. He died two days shy of July 4, 1940. Name him.

Benjamin Duke

James Rogers

Charles Gulledge

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Photo credit: ncpedia.org

On July 4th of this year, visitors to the National Building Museum in Washington DC were able to attend the new exhibit “Stay Cool! Air Conditioning America”, the first major public exhibition to explore the effect of this technology on U.S. culture. What was the year?

1975

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2004

2011

Photo credit: Biber Architects