Willis Haviland Carrier (November 26, 1876 – October 7, 1950) was an
engineerEngineers are concerned with developing economical and safe solutions to practical problems, by applying mathematics and scientific knowledge while considering technical constraints. The term is derived from the Latin root "ingenium," meaning "cleverness"...
and
inventorAn inventor is a person who creates or discovers a new method, form, device or other useful means. The word inventor comes form the latin verb invenire, invent-, to find...
, and is known as the man who invented modern
air conditioningAn air conditioner is a home appliance, system, or mechanism designed to dehumidify and extract heat from an area, or provide heat to an area. The cooling is done using a simple refrigeration cycle...
.
Carrier was born in
AngolaAngola is a village in Erie County, New York, United States. The population was 2,266 at the 2000 census. The name is reportedly derived from the nation of Angola...
,
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and inherited his mother's love for "tinkering", with clocks, sewing machines, and other household devices. He loved
mathematicsMathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....
, and studied it at every opportunity. In 1895 he received a scholarship to
Cornell UniversityCornell University is a private university located in Ithaca, New York, USA, that is a member of the Ivy League.Cornell counts more than 255,000 living alumni, 28 Rhodes Scholars and 41 Nobel laureates affiliated with the university as faculty or students...
and graduated in 1901 with a degree in
Mechanical EngineeringMechanical Engineering is an engineering discipline that was developed from the application of principles from physics and materials science. Mechanical engineering involves the analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of various systems...
.
Willis Haviland Carrier (November 26, 1876 – October 7, 1950) was an
engineerEngineers are concerned with developing economical and safe solutions to practical problems, by applying mathematics and scientific knowledge while considering technical constraints. The term is derived from the Latin root "ingenium," meaning "cleverness"...
and
inventorAn inventor is a person who creates or discovers a new method, form, device or other useful means. The word inventor comes form the latin verb invenire, invent-, to find...
, and is known as the man who invented modern
air conditioningAn air conditioner is a home appliance, system, or mechanism designed to dehumidify and extract heat from an area, or provide heat to an area. The cooling is done using a simple refrigeration cycle...
.
Early life and education
Carrier was born in
AngolaAngola is a village in Erie County, New York, United States. The population was 2,266 at the 2000 census. The name is reportedly derived from the nation of Angola...
,
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and inherited his mother's love for "tinkering", with clocks, sewing machines, and other household devices. He loved
mathematicsMathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....
, and studied it at every opportunity. In 1895 he received a scholarship to
Cornell UniversityCornell University is a private university located in Ithaca, New York, USA, that is a member of the Ivy League.Cornell counts more than 255,000 living alumni, 28 Rhodes Scholars and 41 Nobel laureates affiliated with the university as faculty or students...
and graduated in 1901 with a degree in
Mechanical EngineeringMechanical Engineering is an engineering discipline that was developed from the application of principles from physics and materials science. Mechanical engineering involves the analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of various systems...
. He then went to work for the Buffalo Forge Company, a maker of heaters, blowers and air exhaust systems, in their heating engineering department designing heating systems to dry lumber and coffee.and
Company formation
In a Buffalo place called Texas Buffalo, NY on July 17, 1902, in response to a quality problem experienced at the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing & Publishing Company of Brooklyn, N.Y., Willis Carrier submitted drawings for what became recognized as the world's first modern air conditioning system. The 1902 installation marked the birth of air conditioning because of the addition of humidity control, which led to the recognition by authorities in the field that air conditioning must perform four basic functions: 1.) control temperature; 2.) control humidity; 3.) control air circulation and ventilation; and, 4.) cleanse the air.
After several more years of refinement and field testing, on January 2, 1906, Carrier was granted U.S. patent No. 808897 on his invention, which he called an "Apparatus for Treating Air," the world's first spray-type air conditioning equipment. It was designed to humidify or dehumidify air, heating water for the first and cooling it for the second. The first sale of the "Apparatus" was made in late-1904 to the LaCrosse National Bank, LaCrosse, Wisc.
In 1906, Carrier discovered that "constant dew-point depression provided practically constant relative humidity," which later became known among air conditioning engineers as the "law of constant dew-point depression." On this discovery he based the design of an automatic control system for which he filed a patent claim on May 17, 1907. The patent, No. 1,085,971, was issued on February 3, 1914, thereby recognizing Carrier as the inventor of "dew-point control."
On December 3, 1911 Carrier presented the most significant and epochal document ever prepared on air conditioning -- his "Rational Psychrometric Formulae" -- at the annual meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. It became known as the "Magna Carta of Psychrometrics."
With the onset of World War I in late-1914, the Buffalo Forge Company, for which Carrier had been employed 12 years, decided to confine its activities entirely to manufacturing. The result -- seven young engineers pooled together their life savings of $32,600 to form the Carrier Engineering Corporation in New York on June 26, 1915. The seven were Carrier, J. Irvine Lyle, Edward T. Murphy, L. Logan Lewis, Ernest T. Lyle, Alfred E. Stacey, Jr., and Edmund P. Heckel. The company eventually settled on Frelinghuysen Avenue in Newark, N.J.
Despite the development of the centrifugal refrigeration machine and the commercial growth of air conditioning to cool buildings in the 1920s, the company ran into financial difficulties, as did many others, as a result of the stock market crash in October, 1929. In 1930, Carrier Engineering Corp. merged with Brunswick-Kroeschell Company and York Heating & Ventilating Corporation to form the Carrier Corporation, with Willis Carrier named Chairman of the Board.
Spread out over four cities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, Carrier consolidated and moved his company to
Syracuse, New YorkSyracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2000 census, the city population was 147,306, and its metropolitan area had a population of 732,117. It is the economic and educational hub of Central New...
in 1937, and the company became one of the largest employers in central
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. In 1930, he started Toyo Carrier and Samsung Applications in
KoreaKorea is a civilization and formerly unified nation currently divided into two states. Located on the Korean Peninsula, it borders China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the east by the Korea Strait....
and
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. South Korea is now the largest producer for air conditioning in the world.
The Great Depression slowed residential and commercial use of air-conditioning. Willis Carrier's igloo in the 1939 World's Fair gave visitors a glimpse into the future of air conditioning, but before it became popular, World War II began.
The company pioneered the design and manufacture of refrigeration machines to cool large spaces. By increasing industrial production in the summer months, air conditioning revolutionized American life. The introduction of residential air conditioning in the 1920s helped start the great migration to the
SunbeltThe Sun Belt is a region of the United States generally considered to stretch across the South and Southwest . Another rough boundary of the region is the area south of the 37th or 38th parallels, north latitude. The main defining feature of the Sun Belt is its warm-temperate climate with extended...
. The company became a subsidiary of [United Technologies Corp]. (NYSE:UTX) in 1980. Carrier remains a world leader in commercial and residential HVAC and refrigeration. In 2007
the Carrier CorporationThe Carrier Corporation is the world’s largest manufacturer and distributor of heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems, and a global leader in the commercial refrigeration and food service equipment industry...
had sales of more than $15 billion and employed some 45,000 people.
Personal life
Willis Haviland Carrier was born on November 26, 1876 (not 1875) in Angola, N.Y. He was the son of Duane Williams Carrier (1836 - 1908) and Elizabeth R. Haviland (1845 - 1888). Elizabeth (daughter of David Jay Haviland and Ann Elizabeth Button) named him Willis Haviland after her uncle-in-law Willis Hoag Haviland, with whom she lived after the death of her father in 1868 and before her marriage to Duane Carrier. Willis Hoag Haviland was both the husband of her mother's half-sister Hannah Wing Haviland, and her father's 1st cousin once removed.
The first Carrier in America was Thomas, who arrived in Massachusetts around 1663. There is historical evidence that Thomas was born in Wales in 1622 and that he was a political refugee who assumed the name "Carrier" upon coming to America (Ingels, Margaret. 1952. "Willis Haviland Carrier: Father of Air Conditioning."). Thomas married Martha Allen, daughter of Andrew Allen, a first settler of Andover, Mass. After standing up against the Andover town fathers in a boundary dispute, she was accused of being a witch. Two of her sons, aged 13 and 10, were hung by their heels until they, too, testified against her. Cotton Mather denounced her as a "rampant hag" whome the Devil had promised "should be the queen of Hell." She was arrested, convicted and, on August 19, 1692, hanged on Salem's Gallows Hill. Later it was recorded that of all the New Englanders charged with witchcraft, "Martha Carrier was the only one, male or female, who did not at some time or other make an admission or confession."
The Carriers lived in New England until 1799 when Willis Carrier's great-grandparents joined an ox-team train of settlers pushing west through the Mohawk Valley. They settled in Madison County, New York and then in 1836 moved west again to Erie County. There they purchased the farm that became the birthplace and childhood home of Willis Carrier. His father, Duane, taught music to the Indians, tried running a general store, and was for a short time a postmaster, then settled down to farming and married Elizabeth Haviland. Her forefathers has settled in New England in the 17th century ans she was a "birthright" Quaker -- the first in her family to marry outside her faith. She died in 1887, when Willis was 11 years old.
Carrier and all three of his wives (Claire Seymour, d. 1912; Jennie Martin, d. 1939; Elizabeth Marsh Wise, d. 1964) are buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in
Buffalo, New YorkBuffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, second only to New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River, Buffalo is the principal city of the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area and the seat of Erie...
.
[Ingels, Margaret. 1952. Willis Haviland Carrier : father of air conditioning. Garden City: Country Life Press.]
Despite being married three times, Willis Carrier fathered no children of his own. He adopted his second wife, Jennie's, two children.
For his contributions to science and industry, Willis Carrier was awarded an honorary doctor of letters from Alfred (N.Y.) University in 1942, and was inducted posthumously in the National Inventors Hall of Fame (1985) and the Buffalo Science Museum Hall of Fame (2008).
External links