Willis carrier biography air conditioning
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The text below is, in large part, a reprint from a brochure published by Forest Lawn Cemetery
Willis Haviland Carrier, the man known as "The Father of the Air Conditioning Industry," was born on November 26 on a farm near Angola, a small town in western New York. His father, Duane Carrier, ran the family farm.
Young Willis, however, began showing inventive and mechanical skills at the early age of 11 and it thought that some of those skills, perhaps, were inherited from his mother, Elizabeth Haviland Carrier. It was Elizabeth who fixed family clocks, sewing machines and other mechanical items. Perhaps most importantly, Elizabeth taught Willis fractions and other mathematics and obviously captured the interest and imagination that would lead eventually to Willis becoming an engineer. Even though Willis lost his mother at an early age, years later he would say that she opened "a new world to me and gave me a pattern for solving problems that I have followed ever
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Willis Carrier
One year after earning a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in 1901, Willis Haviland Carrier (1876-1950) developed and patented the world's first modern air conditioner. Carrier's invention not only provided bekvämlighet at home, but also allowed for the controlled conditions necessary in many environments: industrial and scientific (as for the production of many chemicals and pharmaceuticals) and even artistic (as with the protection of fine art at museums).
Before Carrier's invention, cooling systems were merely elaborate methods of ventilation (although some progress had been made – for example, by Lewis Latimer in 1886). But Carrier, with his "Apparatus for Treating Air" (patent #808,897), created a mechanical means to control both temperature and humidity, as well as the cleanliness and circulation of air. Carrier's air conditioner used a low-pressure, centrifugal system to take in air through a filter then pass the air over c
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Willis Haviland Carrier
American engineer and inventor Willis Haviland Carrier developed the formulae and equipment that made air conditioning possible. Born near Angola in Western New York, Carrier attended Cornell University and graduated with an M.E. in 1901.
Only one year later his first installation of scientific air conditioning was in operation, controlling both temperature and humidity in a Brooklyn printing plant. The world's first spray type air conditioning equipment was Carrier's "Apparatus for Treating Air," which he correctly predicted would be used to enhance comfort as well as improve industrial processes and products. In 1911 Carrier disclosed his basic "Rational Psychrometric Formulae" to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The formulae still stand as the basis for all fundamental calculations in the air conditioning industry.
His development of the first safe, low pressure centrifugal refrigeration machine using nontoxic, nonflammable refrigerant ma