During a blistering summer

evening in 1937, Fred Jones sat in his car near a lake in

Minnesota. The heat was unbearable. He rolled down a

window for a breath of fresh air. To his dismay, when he

rolled the window down his car filled with mosquitoes. Up

the window went to keep mosquitoes out. Down the window

went for some air. This cycle of opening and closing the

window continued until he reached a point of total

frustration. "Why doesn't somebody make a gadget to

aircondition a car, like they do in theaters?" he

said.

It Can't Be Done!

Fred Jones quit school when

he was in sixth grade to support his widowed mother. He

was quite a handyman. His interests ranged from repairing

automobiles, building race cars to sound production

equipment. His first involvement with airconditioning

began when he was employed at the ThermoKing Company.

Shortly after the mosquito

episode, he drove to a library and studied everything

available on airconditioning and refrigeration. In those

days air-conditioning for trucks and cars was deemed

"impossible." Critics said, "It couldn't

be done." Block ice was the only way to keep

perishables from spoiling. This made long term storage

and transportation of food items extremely difficult and

short lived. Once his research was completed, he took out

paper and drew the plan for the first mobile

airconditioning unit.

The next day didn't come

quick enough. He presented the plan to his boss. Joseph

A. Numero was not interestedIt was too radical of an

idea. Numero said, "It is too heavy . . . too

expensive, and I don't think anyone would buy it. Besides

we're in the sound equipment business, so let's forget

it."

On the shelve the idea went

until a year later. Numero was playing golf with two

other friends when one complained that one of his truck

shipments of chickens had spoiled during a recent trip

out of town. The entire shipment had to be thrown out and

destroyed. On the golf course, the three men dared each

other to invent a truck mobile airconditioner.

Numero remembered Jones'

idea, but did not act on it. It wasn't until one of the

golfpartners called