Sometimes, something done in error ends up a prophecy.

As I was working on an end of year 2010 story about possible HFC refrigerant mandates, I remembered that many years ago when I was working on the old, now defunct RSC Magazine I was doing a story on the phase out of CFCs under the Montreal Protocol mandates.

To illustrate the story, we ran a drawing of a technician venting refrigerant with a big “X” through the drawing making it clear that that could not be done anymore.

Only problem was the sketch was based on a photo of a technician working on an air-conditioning condensing unit. In the original photo, the tech was doing everything properly and was not venting. In the drawing, we just faked a pretty phony looking cloud of supposedly vented refrigerant rising over the condenser.

Of course, what many of our readers noticed was that such condensing units in those days ran on HCFC-22 which at the time was not a refrigerant that came under the no venting rule.

So it really wasn’t a correct image - then.

Now venting of HCFCs is banned, so the image would make sense today.

Wish we had saved the drawing.