New York City, we love you. But we’ll admit that we love you a little less when it’s 90 degrees outside with 100% humidity. It’s bad enough that we need to change our clothes three times a day due to sheer perspiration, but worse, we have the added burden of worrying about how to keep our abodes cool. Lugging an air conditioner up six flights of stairs is no easy feat! That’s why we’re teaming up with Quirky and GE to bring you UberCOOL, on-demand delivery of Aros, the world’s smartest air conditioner. Now you definitely don’t have to worry about breaking a sweat! Developed by Quirky and GE, Aros is a smart window air conditioner that lets you control the temperature in your apartment from anywhere using the Wink mobile app. Aros also learns from your budget, location, schedule, and usage to automatically maintain the perfect temperature while maximizing savings for your home. ENTER promotion code UBERCOOL in your app to unlock the UberCOOL option REQUEST the ‘COOL’ option on the bottom of the screen between 9am and 9pm during the weekends of May 31, June 7, and June 14

A Quirky truck will arrive at your home to deliver your new Aros smart window A/C Aros, the world’s smartest A/C, costs $300. This price includes delivery. The charge will be billed to the credit card associated with your Uber account. If you have more than one card on file, you can always choose which one to use by following these instructions: In your app, once you select COOL and tap the black ‘Set Pickup Location’ bar, you will be presented with another screen that looks like the image below. From there, just tap the field that has your credit card info and you’ll be able to switch it. Like all Quirky products, Aros was invented by a real person like you. Garthen Leslie, an IT consultant from Columbia, Maryland, was fed up with his own dysfunctional air conditioner, so he dreamt up a smarter solution. With the help of 2,993 Quirky community members, Aros became a reality a mere seven months later. Aros can be controlled for anywhere using the Wink mobile app.

It knows how much you’re spending on energy and suggests cost-saving solutions based on your habits and the weather forecast. It also operates 100% based on you; Aros learns from your usage patterns and predicts your cooling preferences based on time of day. Aros also uses your smartphone’s GPS settings to turn off when you leave the house and kick back into action when you’re heading home. All of this from its sleek, beautifully designed unit that puts other A/Cs to shame. Cools 350 sq. ft. (~17’x20′) Fits double-hung windows 24.5″ to 40.5″ W x 13.5″ H Three cooling modes + three fan speeds 8000 BTU, 115 volt, 6.3 amps Aros smart window A/C will be delivered directly to your home. Even if you live in a six-floor walk-up, we’ll be there for you. You will be responsible for installing Aros in your own window. Demand will be highest around 9am, so be patient when requesting. You’ll have six days total to request UberCOOL. UberCOOL deliveries will only be available in Manhattan and inner Brooklyn and Queens.

Feel free to reach out on Twitter at @Uber_NYC or email us here.Many Americans are turning to their air conditioners to combat the current heat wave. These artificial breezes are a relatively novel innovation, however, as this history of air conditioning explains. Throughout the ages, humans have gone to great lengths to keep cool, from transporting mountains of snow to putting their underwear in the icebox, as Will Oremus reported in 2011. best rated window ac unitHis original article is reprinted below.ac unit for a room Anyone tempted to yearn for a simpler time must reckon with a few undeniable unpleasantries of life before modern technology: abscessed teeth, chamber pots, the bubonic plague—and a lack of air conditioning in late July. central ac units ratings

As temperatures rise into the triple digits across the eastern United States, it's worth remembering how we arrived at the climate-controlled summer environments we have today. Until the 20th century, Americans dealt with the hot weather as many still do around the world: They sweated and fanned themselves. Primitive air-conditioning systems have existed since ancient times, but in most cases, these were so costly and inefficient as to preclude their use by any but the wealthiest people. In the United States, things began to change in the early 1900s, when the first electric fans appeared in homes. But cooling units have only spread beyond American borders in the last couple of decades, with the confluence of a rising global middle class and breakthroughs in energy-efficient technology. Attempts to control indoor temperatures began in ancient Rome, where wealthy citizens took advantage of the remarkable aqueduct system to circulate cool water through the walls of their homes.

The emperor Elagabalus took things a step further in the third century, building a mountain of snow—imported from the mountains via donkey trains—in the garden next to his villa to keep cool during the summer. Marvelously inefficient, the effort presaged the spare-no-cost attitude behind our modern-day central air-conditioning systems. Even back then some scoffed at the concept of fighting heat with newfangled technologies. Seneca, the stoic philosopher, mocked the "skinny youths" who ate snow to keep cool rather than simply bearing the heat like a real Roman ought to. Such luxuries disappeared during the Dark Ages, and large-scale air-conditioning efforts didn't resurface in the West until the 1800s, when well-funded American engineers began to tackle the problem. In the intervening centuries, fans were the coolant of choice. Hand fans were used in China as early as 3,000 years ago, and a second-century Chinese inventor has been credited with building the first room-sized rotary fan (it was powered by hand).

Architecture also played a major role in pre-modern temperature control. In traditional Middle Eastern construction, windows faced away from the sun, and larger buildings featured "wind towers" designed to catch and circulate the prevailing breezes. In late 19th-century America, engineers had the money and the ambition to pick up where the Romans had left off. In 1881, a dying President James Garfield got a respite from Washington, D.C.'s oppressive summer swelter thanks to an awkward device involving air blown through cotton sheets doused in ice water. Like Elagabalus before him, Garfield's comfort required enormous energy consumption; his caretakers reportedly went through half a million pounds of ice in two months. The big breakthrough, of course, was electricity. Nikola Tesla's development of alternating current motors made possible the invention of oscillating fans  in the early 20th century. And in 1902, a 25-year-old engineer from New York named Willis Carrier invented the first modern air-conditioning system.

The mechanical unit, which sent air through water-cooled coils, was not aimed at human comfort, however; it was designed to control humidity in the printing plant where he worked. In 1922, he followed up with the invention of the centrifugal chiller, which added a central compressor to reduce the unit's size. It was introduced to the public on Memorial Day weekend, 1925, when it debuted at the Rivoli Theater in Times Square. For years afterward, people piled into air-conditioned movie theaters on hot summer days, giving rise to the summer blockbuster. It's not an exaggeration to say that Carrier's innovation shaped 20th-century America. In the 1930s, air conditioning spread to department stores, rail cars, and offices, sending workers' summer productivity soaring. Until then, central courtyards and wide-open windows had offered the only relief. Residential air conditioning was slower to take hold: As late as 1965, just 10 percent of U.S. homes had it, according to the Carrier Corporation.