"“Copper Men Do Not Get Cold Toes”: The Science and Selling of Comfort"

Lumpy, Chauncy, and Sam are three oddly-named men at center of decades of comfort science research. Yet these three are not human, nor do they experience any sensation of comfort themselves. Instead, they are copper men, manikins whose “feelings” were used as stand-ins for human test subjects in the twentieth century as the scientific study of comfort evolved into a commercializable sensation. They represent the evolution of how scientists measure and study comfort, and the challenge of grappling with individual, subjective human sensations while striving towards a scientific goal of universal understanding of comfort as well as a corporate goal of selling comfort. This presentation traces three stages in the history of comfort science. In the nineteenth century, physiologists and hygienists developed the variables that eventually became associated with comfort, especially heat- and moisture-retention. In the early twentieth century, heating and cooling engineers put those variables to work and demonstrated faith in the notion that a “comfort zone” would capture most people’s experience of comfort. By the second half of the twentieth century, the new paradigm of “thermal comfort” more explicitly engaged with the idea that individual bodies experienced comfort differently. Comfort professionals by this point in time included a wide range of scientists, including physiologists, materials scientists, and engineers working in academia, for the U.S. military, and for private corporations. How comfort scientists and comfort marketers examined their primary charge changed over time over time. Nonetheless, even with the allowance for individual sensation, wanting to create a universal measure and universal control remained a consistent focus of comfort professionals’ work.