![]() ![]() Some of the early “inland” farmers on Long Island, for example, would spend the summer fishing along the shore, often only a mile or two from their homes, MacNish explains. ![]() Wealthy families weren’t the only ones to relocate during the sweltering summer months. “On a more private level, anecdotal evidence shows wealthier colonial women who were overcome by the heat could retire to their cellars, where it was cool, wearing nothing but a shift.” 2. ![]() “The women that worked in the kitchen often had no choice but to wear woolen dresses because wool was more resistant to fire, and working near the open flame of the fireplace, catching fire was always a concern,” he explains. ![]() That wasn’t the case even a few decades ago, though, when AC wasn’t as common, and there was more of a delineation between “summer” and “winter” clothes.Īccording to MacNish, this was also true for 17th- and 18th-century settlers in the northern parts of the American colonies, most of whom shifted from wearing heavy woolen garments in the winter, to those made from linen or cotton in the summer. Living and working in climate-controlled environments, much of our modern wardrobe-with the exception of some outerwear-can be worn year-round. Here are 11 examples of those advances, and other ways people used to beat the heat. “Advances came slowly and incrementally.” “Up until the advent of air conditioning, the concept of keeping cool was more evolutionary than revolutionary,” says Mark MacNish, the executive director of the Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council, located on the North Fork of Long Island, New York, and home to a 17th-century English settlement. Air conditioning may have caught on quickly, but the technology was a long time in the making. ![]()
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