Today, Carrier is so well known as a manufacturer of heating cooling and air quality products, most people aren’t aware that the man behind the name, Willis Carrier, was actually responsible for inventing the modern air conditioner.
Born in 1876 in Angola, New York, Willis Carrier was an only child who was destined to change the face of engineering, but a young Willis struggled with the concept of fractions. Wanting to help her son understand, Willis’ mother tutored him by cutting apples into fractional pieces, and using them to teach the abstract concept in a more tangible way. Carrier would later talk about his mother’s lesson as one of his life’s most important, as it taught him the importance of practical problem solving.
Despite this early trouble with fractions, Willis Carrier did well in school and was able to study at Cornell University after winning a competitive scholarship. At this time, the engineering industry and its inventions were relatively inefficient, because engineers didn’t understand the science behind why machinery functioned like it did. Armed with intellect and curiosity, Willis Carrier wanted to dig deeper to understand why things worked the way they did. After graduating in 1901, Carrier went to work for the Buffalo Forge Company and founded the world’s first industrial laboratory, which helped Buffalo Forge to design more efficient products.
The project that would result in Carrier inventing the air conditioner wasn’t actually based on a problem with cooling, but rather humidity. A lithographing company in Brooklyn was having problems with humidity in their printing plant that caused paper to shrink and expand. Carrier had his “Eureka” moment while standing on a foggy train platform in Pittsburgh, as he realized that air could be made less humid by passing it through water to create fog. After this epiphany, Carrier set to work designing a system that reduced the humidity in air, which happened to cool it at the same time. Carrier’s dehumidifying invention was useful in all sorts of industrial settings where moist air caused problems, but its potential as a comfort invention had yet to be realized by anyone but Carrier himself.
By 1906, Carrier had become the chief engineer at Buffalo Forge, and founded Carrier Air Conditioning as a subsidiary of Buffalo. His faith in potential of air conditioning paid off, and eventually air conditioning systems began appearing in theaters, concert halls, and the skyscrapers that were beginning to take shape in the New York and Chicago skylines. Continued success came to Carrier in 1915, when he struck out on his own to found the Carrier Engineering Company. This new company was responsible for designing the first centrifugal compressor, which was smaller, safer, and more efficient than previous models, and became an essential component of the portable air conditioning units that were manufactured over the next several decades. In the 1950s, the economic boom following WWII made residential air conditioning commonplace, and advancements in engineering have continued to make in-home AC more effective and efficient.
Willis Carrier’s contribution to modern engineering hasn’t gone unnoticed. He was awarded honorary doctorates in 1935 and 1942, was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1985, and named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century”. For all of us who enjoy air conditioning, whether it’s in our homes, cars, or public buildings, we’ve got Willis Carrier’s ingenuity to thank for keeping us cool and comfortable.
