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This Month in Business History

Patent for the Air Conditioner Issued to Willis H. Carrier

display of three portable air conditioners
Horydczak, Theodor, photographer. Electric Institute of Washington, Potomac Electric Power Co. Air conditioning display. 1920-1950. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

On February 3, 1914, Patent 1,085,971 External was issued for a “Method of humidifying air and controlling the humidity and temperature thereof.” In it, the inventor Willis H. Carrier explains how this invention will help with ventilation problems in a textile mill, and includes this:

This invention relates more particularly to methods or systems for humidifying and for regulating the humidity and temperature of air in textile mills. The invention is nevertheless applicable generally for humidifying and regulating the humidity and temperature of air regardless of the use to which the air is put. 1

Willis Haviland Carrier was born in 1876 in New York. After receiving his engineering degree from Cornell, he went to work for Buffalo Forge Company, a manufacturer of blacksmith forges and, later, steam engines and pumps. While his invention was patented in 1914, it was actually designed much earlier and his first air conditioning system was installed in July 1902 at a printing plant in Brooklyn for Sackett & Wilhelms.2 Beyond this invention, in 1911, he presented “Rational Psychrometric Formulae” to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. This paper became the cornerstone used in calculations in air conditioning still in use today.

In 1915, Carrier, J. I. Lyle, E. T. Murphy, L. L. Lewis and others, founded Carrier Engineering Corporation to manufacture and sell heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.3 Candymakers were some of the first businesses to install Carrier’s products, but others followed. Soon air conditioning systems were found in hotels, restaurants, department stores, theaters, trains, ships, and hospitals around the world. Carrier won the contract to install air conditioning in both chambers of Congress and equipment was installed in the House in 1928 and in the Senate in 1929.

The company started with larger systems for business and industrial facilities, and then moved on to the other systems for apartment buildings and temperature controlling machines they called weathermakers that were designed for the home. While the first home air conditioners were expensive and designed for larger, more expensive homes, the Carrier Home Weathermaker was priced for smaller homes. The Carrier Room Weathermaker was introduced in 1932. 4

The company reorganized and became Carrier Corporation in 1931, and six years later consolidated operations in Syracuse. In 1939, they exhibited at the World’s Fair in New York where their pavilion “Carrier Igloo of Tomorrow” looked like a giant cone-shaped igloo. After World War II they continued to install systems in many of the most prestigious hotels around the country. In 1979, it was acquired by United Technologies but was spun off in 2020, and is now known as Carrier Global Corporation.

As for Carrier himself, in 1934 the American Society of Mechanical Engineers awarded Carrier their highest medal in recognition of distinguished engineering achievement. Carrier and his co-authors published three editions of Modern Air Conditioning, Heating and Ventilating, and Carrier wrote a number of articles including those published in Refrigerating Engineer. He continued to be involved with the company for a number of years and died on October 7, 1950.

In 2002 Congress honored Carrier specifically mentioning demonstrations of the equipment in Congress. Carrier’s invention has had a profound impact on how we build, live, and work.

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Notes

  1. Carrier, Willis H. (1914). Method of humidifying air and controlling the humidity and temperature thereof (Patent 1,085,971 External). U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Back to text
  2. Carrier History External, (accessed June 25, 2024). Back to text
  3. Carrier Corporation, Twenty-five years of air conditioning, 1915-1940, (Syracuse: 1940) 6. Back to text
  4. Twenty-five years of air conditioning, 20, 25. Back to text