Willis Carrier

• Born: November 26, 1876
• Birthplace: Angola, New York
• Died: October 9, 1950
• Place of death: New York, New York

American engineer

Deemed by Time magazine as one of the one hundred “Most Important People of the Century,” Carrier was instrumental in the development of one of the most significant and quintessential inventions of the last hundred years, the air conditioner.

Primary field: Mechanical engineering

Primary invention: Air conditioner

Early Life

Born the only child of older parents, Willis Haviland Carrier was the direct descendant of a prominent New England family that included an ancestor hanged by the Puritans during the notorious Salem trials of the seventeenth century. Carrier’s father was a farmer, and his mother a “birthright” Quaker. Carrier grew up surrounded primarily by adults, including his grandparents and a great-aunt. Lacking siblings, he spent a great deal of time tinkering with any gadget he could find around the house. Surprisingly, however, he struggled with even the most fundamental math in school, having to slice apples into various parts so he could understand fractions. Although he was not regarded as a particularly motivated or industrious child, his marks in secondary school were sufficient to gain him a scholarship to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. There Carrier studied electrical engineering while earning his room and board by stoking furnaces, mowing lawns, and taking in his classmates’ laundry.

Shortly after graduating from Cornell with a master’s degree in 1901, Carrier landed his first professional engineering job. At the Buffalo Forge Company, he initially designed commercial heating systems to dry lumber and coffee. Within months after joining the company’s research department, he had worked out a series of accurate tables used to calculate how much surface area would be needed to heat a given space. This, his first of many contributions to climate-control technology, saved Buffalo Forge $40,000 and catapulted Carrier to head of the department. He had overcome his childhood difficulties with math through rote trial-and-error experimentation and perseverance, traits that would soon lead him to develop one of the twentieth century’s most important inventions.

Life’s Work

Also while with Buffalo Forge, Carrier made several important discoveries related to industrial heating and humidity control and made his first forays into the industrial application of cooling methods. In 1902, he worked with Brooklyn, New York, printer Sackett-Wilhelms to control the excessive humidity that had previously wreaked havoc on the delicate conditions required for quality color printing. Not only did the “dew-point control” device he designed control humidity, but it also cooled interior air. Carrier had in effect designed the world’s first mechanical Air conditioning air-conditioning system. He promptly applied for the first of what would eventually become hundreds of U.S. patents, for a mechanism that created a spray mist to regulate the air in a public ventilating system. His “manufactured weather” system was first installed at La Crosse National Bank in La Crosse, Wisconsin. In 1906, Carrier devised methods to help a South Carolina textile mill control the temperature of dangerously overheating fabric spindles, which led to his discovery of the “law of constant dew-point depression.” He subsequently used this principle to design the automatic temperature control system, for which he was awarded his second patent. Carrier’s engineering paper “Rational Psychrometric Formulae,” published in 1911, laid the theoretical foundations of modern air-conditioning design.

While Carrier worked at Buffalo Forge, his potential for advancing the development of climate-control technology seemed limitless. However, in 1914, a setback occurred that influenced how Carrier did business for the rest of his life. At the prompting of frugal and shortsighted financiers, the company dismantled its engineering department, seeing no further need to put its resources into product development or innovation. Carrier and several other engineers were let go. Disgruntled but undeterred, he and Buffalo Forge salesman Irving Lyle raised $35,000 capital and formed their own company. Prior to Carrier Engineering Corporation, air conditioning had been regarded primarily as an industrial application. The cooling of machines, not people, was viewed as the only feasible commercial use for interior cooling devices. However, Carrier and his new partners saw vast potential in the development and production of air-conditioning systems for indoor temperature and air-quality control.

One major obstacle to cooling public spaces safely, however, was the flammable refrigerants used to cool industrial machines. In 1922, Carrier developed the first nonflammable coolant, as well as the first centrifugal refrigerating machine—the nexus of the two technologies that finally made safe and cost-effective air conditioning possible. By the mid-1920’s, Carrier’s new machine, propelled by the refrigerant methylene chloride, made his air-conditioning systems feasible for public use. The celebrated Grauman’s Metropolitan Theater in Los Angeles, in addition to a handful of comparably sized theaters in Texas, became his first commercial clients. Also, by 1928, Carrier was able to expand the scope of his company’s offerings, installing the first large-scale air-conditioning system in the twenty-one-story Milam Building in San Antonio. In the same year, Carrier also made available the first home air-conditioning unit, which was gas-powered.

Carrier Corporation enjoyed monumental success even during the Great Depression, attesting to the fundamental appeal and prescience of its founder’s inventions. In 1932, Carrier installed his first “centralized” air-conditioning system in Philadelphia’s thirty-two-story Savings Fund Society Building. His ingenious design, which placed its cooling plant in the center of the building so as to allow efficient air flow equally to all floors both above and below the housing, remains the method by which high-rise buildings are cooled even today. Air conditioning was the toast of the renowned 1939 New York World’s Fair. Through the 1930’s and 1940’s, Carrier continued to develop and introduce a host of innovations that led, in the subsequent decades, to making air conditioning as commonplace and essential as indoor plumbing or electricity.

Perhaps less well known, but just as significant, were the industrial temperature and air-quality control systems Carrier continued to develop and market until his death in 1950. As early as 1929, he had designed the air-conditioning system for the Morro Velho gold mine in Brazil that made deep-shaft mining possible. This development made the extraction of deep ground commodities as diverse as coal, diamonds, and rare minerals more feasible and efficient than had ever been thought possible.

Impact

Carrier was a remarkable figure. Although he died in 1950 just as the age of modern climate control was getting under way, his invention has affected the course of human development in the last half century in ways that only a handful of other technological innovations can claim. By controlling the unwanted heat and humidity often created as a by-product of large-scale manufacturing processes, Carrier’s technology allowed countless industries to become more efficient. Modern cooling and climate control has paved the way for people to live, assemble, and interact in spaces never before dreamed of—including indoor theaters, concert halls, stadiums, and shopping malls. Without air conditioning, modern high-rise office complexes, hospitals, and apartment buildings would not be possible. Countless lifesaving drugs, chemical formulations, and industrial processes owe their existence to the precise climate control afforded by the technologies designed and marketed by Carrier.

Although seldom celebrated as an entrepreneur or business figure, Carrier also merits mention as one of the twentieth century’s most important industrialists. Not only did he invent the device that makes much of modern industry possible, but he also founded and operated one of the world’s largest corporations for over three decades. Affectionately dubbed “The Chief” by his employees, Carrier led Carrier Corporation until his death, and the company remained the largest independent heating and cooling business in the world until 1979, when it became a division of international conglomerate United Technologies. Carrier’s products are still sold in 172 countries on six continents, a testament not only to the technological genius but also to the business acumen of one of the most important industrialists of the last hundred years.

Bibliography

Bridgman, Roger. One Thousand Inventions and Discoveries. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2002. A collection of articles about the modern world’s most influential technological developments. Includes a colorful, engaging biography of Carrier as well as a highly accessible explanation of how air conditioning works. Focuses on the impact of Carrier and his most famous invention on contemporary life. Illustrations, bibliography, index.

Ingels, Margaret. Willis Haviland Carrier: Father of Air Conditioning. 1952. Reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1972. Perhaps the only book-length biography of Carrier, this work provides a rare glimpse into the inventor’s childhood and early adult life, probing the forces that shaped his remarkable character, drive, and genius. Also provides many employee anecdotes and personal accounts related to Carrier’s years as head of Carrier Corporation. Illustrations, index.

Langley, Billy C. Fundamentals of Air Conditioning Systems. 2d ed. Lilburn, Ga.: Fairmont Press, 2000. Technical text on the theory, design, and function of modern air-conditioning systems. Illustrations, bibliography, index.

McQuiston, Faye C., J. D. Parker, and J. D. Spitler. Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning Analysis and Design. 6th ed. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2005. Additional text on the air-conditioning technology. Focuses on the historical development of modern air-conditioning methods, including a section on Carrier’s contributions to the science of climate control. Illustrations, bibliography, index.

Panati, Charles. Panati’s Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things. New York: HarperCollins, 1989. Similar to the Bridgman book, an anthology filled with information about the development of several significant modern inventions and technological processes. Contains some biographical references to Carrier but concerns itself primarily with describing the design and function of the modern air conditioner. Illustrations, bibliography, index.