Willis Carrier

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Willis Carrier bigraphy, stories - Inventors

Willis Carrier : biography

November 26, 1876 – November 7, 2011

Willis Haviland Carrier (November 26, 1876 – October 6, 1950) was an American engineer who invented modern air conditioning.

Legacy

In 1930, Carrier started Toyo Carrier and Samsung Applications in Japan and Korea. South Korea is now the largest producer for air conditioning in the world. The Carrier Corporation 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 Sunbelt. The company became a subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation in 1980. The Carrier Corporation remains a world leader in commercial and residential HVAC and refrigeration. In 2007, the Carrier Corporation had sales of more than $15 billion and employed some 45,000 people.

Biography

Willis Carrier was born on November 26, 1876, in Angola, New York, the son of Duane Williams Carrier (1836–1908) and Elizabeth R. Haviland (1845–1888).His mother was the 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.Frost, Josephine C. The Haviland Genealogy — Ancestors and Descendants of William Haviland. New York: The Lyons Genealogical Co., 1914.1860 Federal Census, Queensbury, Warren County, NY, p. 155. Dwelling #1071, Family #1071.1870 Federal Census, Queensbury, Warren County, NY, p. 746. Dwelling #987, Family #1159.1880 Federal Census, Evans, Erie County, NY, p. 367B. Dwelling #400, Family #419..

The first Carrier in the United States 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.. Thomas married Martha Allen, daughter of Andrew Allen, a first settler of Andover, MA. 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" whom 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 had settled in New England in the 17th century, and 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.

Inventing the air conditioner

In Buffalo, New York, on July 17, 1902, in response to a quality problem experienced at the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing & Publishing Company of Brooklyn, 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: