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A Forced Air-Cooled Jacket?

In his 1964 novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick describes a future in which the Earth is much hotter than it is today.

For this reason, Commuter Cooling Units are required apparel:

Looking out the window he saw with aversion that already it had become too hot for human endurance.. he went to the hall closet to get his pith helmet and his mandatory cooling-unit; by law one had to be strapped to every commuter's back until nightfall...

He opened the door and stepped out into the hall, feeling the cool wind of the portable unit as it chugged from behind him...
(Read more about Philip K. Dick's Commuter Cooling Units)

Recently, this jacket was spotted on Reddit - I think it has a cooling unit built in.


(Air conditioned jacket)

Update 05-Apr-2024: You might also compare this invention to the heat suit from Sand Doom (1955) by Murray Leinster:

He grimly stripped to underwear and put on the heat-suit from his bag. He filled its canteens from the boat’s water tank. He turned on the tiny, battery-powered motors. The suit ballooned out. It was intended for short periods of intolerable heat. The motors kept it inflated—away from his skin—and cooled its interior by the evaporation of sweat plus water from its canteen tanks. It was a miniature air-conditioning system for one man, and it should enable him to endure temperatures otherwise lethal to someone with his skin and coloring. But it would use a lot of water.


(Heat-Suit from 'Sand Doom' by Murray Leinster)

End update.

Via Reddit.

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 8/13/2013)

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