Heating & Radiators – A Brief History
Monty Python’s hilarious and controversial 1979 film The Life of Brian contains any number of seminal scenes, being as it is one of the greatest comedy films ever made. Set in the Judea of the Roman Empire around the time of Jesus’s crucifixion, the film, as the name suggests, charts the life of Brian, who has the bad luck to be confused with a messiah – the Romans were not big on dissent, as you probably know… Anyhow, the scene shows a meeting of misfiring rebels who, traducing the Romans, demand ‘what have they ever done for us?’ What follows is a long list of societal benefits, including sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health. One thing they missed there, however, is central heating. The fools… Yes, those ingenious Romans pioneered what we would now call central heating. This didn’t require radiators, as a hypocaust system would heat the air via a furnace and circulate it under floors to provide warmt