Willis Carrier

Willis Carrier (1876–1950) was an American engineer who developed a practical system for controlling temperature and humidity in industrial spaces and founded the company that became Carrier Global.

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Psychrometrics: The study of the thermodynamic properties of moist air and their measurement. Carrier used relationships among air temperature, moisture, and pressure to design reliable humidity control.
Buffalo Forge Company: An American manufacturing company that employed Willis Carrier as an engineer. Carrier designed his first air-conditioning system while working for this company.
Irvine Lyle: An American engineer and business executive who helped develop the air-conditioning industry. Lyle partnered with Carrier in promoting and commercializing air conditioning.
Movie theater air conditioning: The use of mechanical cooling to make cinemas comfortable during warm weather. Theater installations helped make air conditioning a public attraction and broadened demand.
Air conditioning: The control of indoor temperature, humidity, air movement, and air quality. Carrier’s system helped establish air conditioning as an integrated engineering discipline.
Sackett & Wilhelms Lithographing and Publishing Company: A Brooklyn printing company whose production depended on stable paper dimensions and print registration. Its paper warped in humid weather, prompting the engineering problem Carrier tackled in 1902.
J. Irwin Miller: An American industrialist who led the Carrier Corporation for decades after Carrier’s death. Miller expanded the company Carrier founded into a major international manufacturer.
Data center cooling: The removal of heat and control of environmental conditions in facilities housing computing equipment. Modern precision cooling extends the industrial environmental-control problem Carrier helped define.
Centrifugal chiller: A refrigeration machine that uses a rotating impeller to compress refrigerant vapor. Carrier developed a centrifugal refrigeration machine that enabled large-scale cooling.
1902 air-conditioning system: Willis Carrier’s system for controlling temperature and humidity in a Brooklyn printing plant. This installation applied systematic air treatment to stabilize industrial production.