WHO DO I THANK FOR INVENTING AIR CONDITIONING?
This summer has been hot. Thankfully, the indoors is nice and cool if you are lucky enough to have air conditioning. But that wasn’t always the case. So, who do we have to thank for inventing this beautiful thing called air conditioning?
WILLIS CARRIER – INVENTOR OF MODERN AIR CONDITIONING
Although air circulating fans for the purpose of cooling the air has been around since the Han Dynasty, and other various Chinese inventors have piggy-backed off that wonderful idea for hundreds of years, it wasn’t until the 17th century when Cornelis Drebbel “turned Summer into Winter” for James I of England.
Neither of those guys are credited with inventing MODERN air conditioning though. I mean, come on, Drebbel only gave cold air to James I. That’s some magic for the 17th century, but it didn’t cool anybody else off.
In 1902, Willis Carrier invented the modern air conditioning as a large-scale electrical air conditioning unit. His invention came on the backs of hundreds of years of chemistry experiments cooling water and ammonia among others. In fact, James Harrison created the first ice-making machine in 1851, which became the first refrigeration system that was a precursor to Carrier’s invention.
No one called it an air conditioner yet though. It wasn’t until Stuart Cramer coined the term I 1906 to describe a process of monitoring the humidity in the air of textile plants.
Private home air conditioning units were introduced around 1914 into the home of Charles Gates. Home air conditioning may have encouraged the settlement of the Sun Belt in the 1920s because homes could be cooled and humidified in the dangerous summers. By 1945, Robert Sherman had invented the window air conditioning unit for homes.
Later in Carrier’s life, he started Toyo Carrier, Samsung Applications, and the Carrier Corporation. The Carrier Corporation is still a world leader in HVAC and refrigeration development. Samsung still makes some HVAC systems, but they moved on to bigger and better things too.
READ UP OR CONTACT US
See good old Wikipedia for more information on the history of air conditioning. For help keeping your home cool and your air conditioning up to modern standards, contact First Class HVAC. We provide installations, inspections, service, and repairs. Call 302-645-1502 for a free quote today.