At the beginning of the 20th century, a young Willis Carrier was working for Buffalo Forge Company when he designed a system to control temperature and humidity for a New York lithographic company. He had been an engineer working on heaters, blowers and exhaust systems when he came up with the invention and other Carrier air conditioning work helped move the company forward and was made head of the division known as Carrier Air Conditioning Company in 1906, a subsidiary of Buffalo Forge.
During the first World War, Carrier and six of his friends opened Carrier Engineering Corporation and after providing Madison Square Gardens and the House of Representatives and the House of Senate with cool air, Carrier air conditioning appeared in the first private residence in Minneapolis.
With Carrier air conditioning now available for residential use, people flocked to the Sunbelt where daily temperatures soared and air conditioning made the air tolerable. With a division open in Japan, Carrier air conditioning became one of the first and fastest growing air conditioning companies in the world. Today, Carrier remains one of the top names associated with air conditioning and still revolves around his early inventions for cooling and humidity control developed while he worked for Buffalo Forge.
Being Called Father Of Air Conditioning
Although the term air conditioning was introduced by Stuart Cramer in 1906, Carrier air conditioning units earned him the nickname of Father of Air Conditioning as he continued to seek better and more efficient methods to cool buildings while controlling humidity. This was the need of his first devices used to help the printing company maintain a constant temperature and humidity level, enabling it to print with consistency.
Movie theaters in Dallas and Houston extolled the virtues of Carrier air conditioning units once they were installed on their theaters. They proclaimed that movie-goers were delighted in being able to watch the show in the cool air and that attendance had increased drastically since their installation. It was a period of change for indoor activities, when some activities were severely curtailed when the temperature indoors became unbearable.
The dining care of the Martha Washington train became the first railroad car fitted with Carrier air conditioning and in 1937 and air conditioned bus made its first trip from Baghdad to Damascus. In these early days with air conditioning being introduced into new uses, Carrier air conditioning changed the way the world thought about their living conditions and basically changed the environment on many levels.