Once Lyle accepted this business proposition, he turned to another employee Buffalo Forge named Willis Carrier.
At the time neither Lyle nor Carrier realized what an adventure they were fixing to go on together.
But energized by the puzzle, Carrier immediately got to work.
His first experiment was a suggestion from Timmis himself.
This experiment involved saturating a loosely woven burlap roller towel with solution of calcium chloride brine. This process did make the air less humid. However, this process also added heat, salt and odor to the air. This wasn’t going to work.
Then one day Carrier had a “lightbulb moment.”
This process relied heavily on the principle of condensation and laid the foundation for the development of climate control.
This process relied heavily on the principle of condensation andlaid the foundation for the development of climate control.
On July 17, 1902, Carrier completed and initialed a set of mechanical drawings
Carrier then sent these drawings to Lyle to be installed at the Sackett & Wilhelms plant.
A year later after Carrier’s air conditioning design was installed at the printing press – on October 21, 1903 – Lyle reported in a letter to his home office that…
The cooling coils which we sold this company have given excellent results during the past summer.
His design with all of its fans, ducts, heaters, perforated steam pipes and temperature controls – had actually worked.
Modern air conditioning was born
So who was this extremely brilliant college graduate?
Willis Haviland Carrier was born November 26, 1876.
He was born at his family’s farm in Angelo, New York.
He graduated from Central High School in Buffalo, New York and earned a four-year scholarship to Cornell University.
After graduating from Cornell with a Master of Engineering degree in 1901, Carrier had joined the Buffalo Forge Company in Buffalo, New York, as a research engineer.
His first assignment at this job was to design a heating system that could effectively dry lumber and coffee.
Carrier had already finished several designs – including designs for a heating plant, a lumber dry kiln and a coffee dryer.
But then…
The recent college grad completely changed the world…
