h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Excellent entry--and more relevant to modern life than you might think. Contrary to your observation that steam heat has mostly died out in favor of more efficient systems, I would hazard that the vast majority of buildings in New York City are still heated in this way--mostly because, as you say, the buildings are older and haven't been tampered with all that much. I have lived in two apartments and been in many more, and all of them, so far, have been heated with radiators.

That said, I found your entry quite useful. I was one of the people who mistakenly believed that the valve regulated the temperature in some way (silly me), and will henceforth use it only to turn the radiator on or off.

You might be interested to know that New Yorkers' main complaint with steam heat is that they get too much of it, turning their apartments in the winter into a sauna. To counteract it, though, very few people actually tamper with the radiator (some don't even know where their radiators are, so cleverly are they occasionally hidden). Instead, they just open the window; which may explain why, even in winter, so much apartment noise makes it out onto the street.

I'm glad you liked it.

Something I read that I did not include in the entry - apparently it was believed at one time that keeping a window open was good for one's health, even in the middle of winter. So the engineers designing the radiator systems took into account that the windows were likely to be open and adjusted the heat output to compensate for the heat loss.

Now that people like to keep their windows shut, they are forced to open them because there is too much heat.

So it goes.