Willis Haviland Carrier: The Inventor of Air-Conditioning

Willis Haviland Carrier is credited with being the inventor of the modern air-conditioning. Born on November 26, 1876, Carrier graduated from the Cornell University in the year 1901 in Mechanical Engineering. In the very next year in 1902, eight months after graduation, he founded air conditioning. Meanwhile, he kept on working with Buffalo Forge Company, which was involved into the manufacturing of heaters, blowers and air exhaust systems. He was involved into the designing of these systems.

While working in the company, Carrier came across the problem faced by the “Judge,” the popular magazine of that time, at their printing press. They had problem of vexing specially during the summer seasons. Judge was a color magazine and it was found that as the atmospheric humidity increased or decreased there was change in the dimensions of the paper and even the color won’t look properly aligned. So the basic problem was the changing humidity and it had to be kept constant.

After thorough study of the problem, Carrier realized that the problematic humidity can be removed from the printing press by chilling the surrounding air. He went on to design the machine that could control the temperature and humidity of air, i.e. condition the air. This laid the foundation for creation of the first mechanically operated air-condition machine.

The creation of the first modern air-conditioning system by Carrier marked the beginning of entirely new industry. It went on to become one of the most important discoveries of the human history. Soon, the inventions of Carrier were used for cooling in departmental stores, offices, hospitals, banks and even US Congress. The use of air-conditioning just went on widening and it has now become inseparable part of the human life.

Willis created his own company, “Carrier Corporation,” in the year 1915. In US it is recognized as the first independent firm devoted to the science of manufacturing weather. At present, Carrier is the largest producer and distributor of HVAC products in the world. The company has grown into $12.9 billion Company owned by United Technologies Corporation. The company employs about 43,000 employees and serves customers in 170 countries.