Invention Of Air Conditioning

Air conditioning is now an essential element of many homes and cars worldwide, but for many years after its invention "air-con" was used purely as an industrial tool for the regulation of temperature, dust and humidity in factories.

Artificial ventilation and air-cooling systems date back to the ancients, who hung wet mats over doorways and designed buildings so that air entered after passing through cooling fountains outside. By the 19th century fans were being used to cool air by passing it over ice, but the first scientifically designed air conditioning system was not invented until 1902, by Willis H. Carrier (USA).

Carrier graduated from Cornell University in 1901 with a degree in electrical engineering, and in July that year began working for the Buffalo Forge Co. in Buffalo, New York. Within six months he was put in a charge of what was to become the company's research and development laboratory, where one of his first projects was to ascertain how much heat the air would absorb if circulated over a system of heating coils; his findings were to save the company thousands of dollars in heating bills. Another early project involved not heating, but cooling. The Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing and Publishing Co. in Brooklyn was having problems with colors blurring during the printing process because the paper would expand and contract with changes in temperature or humidity. On 17th July 1902 Carrier completed his designs for the world's first air conditioning unit, a 30-tonne machine that precisely controlled the temperature and humidity of the print room.

Carrier continued to develop his invention, and two years later, on 16 September 1904, he filed a patent (granted 1906) for : "Apparatus for treating air" - the first water-spray air conditioning system. Air was drawn  into the unit by a fan, cooled (or warmed) by the spray, and then passed through a series of baffles to remove the water and any impurities; the water was then re-circulated while the conditioned air passed out of the unit to control the climate of the factory. It was not until the late 1920s that the Carrier Engineering Corp. and other companies began manufacturing air conditioning units for domestic residential use.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison