Cool by Basile Salvatore;

Author:Basile, Salvatore;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 2014-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Frigidaire Room Cooler, which looked suspiciously like its namesake refrigerator. Catalogue copy tried to neutralize the effect by suggesting that it might be “built into a special cabinet, into different types of furniture, or placed behind grilles in the walls of rooms.” (Courtesy of Scharchburg Archives, Kettering University)

Only a few months later the stock market crashed, making it imperative that Frigidaire perform a quick about-face. Over the next year, the Room Cooler was redesigned: not much prettier but far less obtrusive, enameled in “walnut lacquer on steel.” And while the initial rollout had occurred without heavy advertising, in 1931 the Room Cooler was reintroduced to the public through an intensive ad campaign. Significantly, these spots showed up only in business-related magazines—Merchandising Week, Time, The Nation’s Business—and were aimed squarely at the tax-deductible world of executives, famed not only for self-indulgence but also for a schoolboyish infatuation with expensive gadgets, and possibly the only people left in the Depression-pummeled country who had access to disposable income. Every word of the ads swaggered with Business Machismo, stressing not mere sissified comfort but something much more significant … the Room Cooler’s all-important contribution to management efficiency: “Ready to transform hot, stuffy offices into places with an atmosphere so fresh and invigorating that ‘nerve-fag’ never has a chance.” And the whole campaign was pegged on a catchy new phrase—actually, a catchy old phrase, the centerpiece of that now-forgotten 1901 Chicago Tribune article: “Turn on the Cold!”

The most unrestrained squibs ran in the Wall Street Journal. During July and August, a series of full-page ads appeared in the paper, each one adorned with a drawing of a high-powered businessman suffering from the heat in one way or another. On July 2, a defeated-looking executive sits at his desk under a striped umbrella, inexplicably located on the roof of a skyscraper:

Clear thinking calls FOR COOL SURROUNDINGS

SO … TURN ON THE COLD!

Nobody can do a decent day’s work in a hot, stuffy atmosphere—yet the work must be done! … And it can be done—in comfort—with one of the new Frigidaire Room Coolers in your office … ask your secretary to ’phone us today.

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