How Air Conditioning Changed the World

In 1998, Dr. Willis H. Carrier was named one of TIME magazine's “Builders & Titans” of the 20th century. The following year, U.S. News & World Report described him as one of 25 Americans who shaped the modern era and “the coolest American of the century,” writing that “Carrier, the ‘Father of Air Conditioning,’ is the man who made the Sun Belt —a s well as the factory, the movie theater, and the modern home — tolerable in summer.”

By 2000, of 107 million housing units in the U.S., 57.3 million had central air and 23.5 million had room air conditioners. In the southern U.S., air conditioning had become virtually universal. That same year, the National Academy of Engineering selected the 20 greatest engineering achievements of the twentieth century, ranking air conditioning #9, just behind the telephone and just ahead of the U.S. highway system.

When Carrier died in 1950, his successor, Chairman and CEO Cloud Wampler, wrote, “Great as were his scientific achievements — and they were great indeed — it was Dr. Carrier's ability to teach and inspire that created the finest legacy to the company bearing his name.” Today, Willis Carrier is known as the Father of Air Conditioning, famous for launching an industry that changed the world.

In 1913, Carrier engineers sold a residential air-conditioning system with mechanical refrigeration to Charles G. Gates, who was building a mansion in Minneapolis. Unfortunately, Gates died before his new home was occupied. It would take some 20 years for large, industrial air conditioning systems to be reduced in size and cost so that they would become affordable home appliances, and not until the post-World War II baby boom that residential air conditioning would become universally available.

The year 1953 might be considered a tipping point for residential air conditioning. Units of room air conditioners jumped from 74,000 in 1948 to more than 1 million that year. Dealers ran out of stock and had to turn away 100,000 customers. “The rump of a room conditioner bulging out of the window is becoming as unexclusive a social symbol as the television aerial overhead,” Fortune wrote in 1953.

Carrier CEO Cloud Wampler believed that whenever 20% of the office buildings in a city included air conditioning, it forced the others to upgrade to be competitive. In New York City and Philadelphia, this 20% commercial tipping point was reached in 1953. A 1953 survey by the National Association of Home Builders reported that 40% of the 255 leading builders were planning to market air-conditioned homes that year priced under $15,000.

Seventeen years later, The New York Times called the 1970 U.S. Census “The Air-Conditioned Census,” writing that “the humble air-conditioner has been a powerful influence in circulating people as well as air in the country,” and that its availability explained why increasing numbers of Americans found it comfortable to live year-round in the semitropical heat of Florida, southern Texas and southern California.

While modern air conditioning was born on the factory floor in the early 20th century, by the 1920s and 30s it had become integral to department stores, movie theaters, ships, trains, restaurants and supermarkets. Over time, industrial air conditioning systems became smaller, simpler, and less expensive, eventually entering the residential space as a home appliance.

Today, both industrial and residential air conditioning have become more energy efficient, versatile, affordable, intelligent and sustainable.