The Days Before Air Conditioning

Before air conditioning was introduced in Singapore in the 1920s, temperature control was a matter of architectural design. Environmental historian Fiona Williamson tells us how people kept themselves cool before air conditioning arrived, why weather science was important to the colonial enterprise, and what environmental history can tell us about a city’s development.Fiona Williamson is an environmental historian with a particular interest in the history of the climate, meteorology and extreme weather in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. She is professor of environmental history at the Singapore Management University.What Fiona Talked About03:12 – How people kept cool before air conditioning05:49 – When and how air conditioning was introduced to Singapore07:53 – Who could afford early air conditioning10:19 – European reactions to tropical heat12:51 – Meteorology as a colonial science15:31 – Observational stations and instruments18:07 – Colonial attempts to manage water and flooding23:15 – The MacRitchie Reservoir mistake28:03 – Fiona’s book Imperial Weather34:19 – Fiona's work with the International Commission for the History of Meteorology36:52 – Climate history is…38:02 – Whether climate change can be reversedTranscript and ResourcesRead the transcript: https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/all-sections/podcast-the-days-before-air-conditioning-fiona-williamson/Read the BiblioAsia article: https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/all-sections/vol-21-issue-4-jan-mar-2026-air-conditioning-in-singapore/Subscribe to BiblioAsia for more stories about Singapore.This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by Nookcha Films. The background music “Di Tanjong Katong” was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Fiona for coming on the show.The BiblioAsia Podcast by the National Library Singapore tells stories about Singapore history.