Thank heavens for the following inventors. I know cold. Germany, England, Russia, yeah it really gets cold there. A frigid cold the kind that gets deep in your bones. The good old Fireplace just doesn’t cut it. In the dead of winter; I don’t know how they could stand getting out of bed in the little house on the Prairie. Of course there’s the other extreme.
I mean have you ever stood outside in Miami in the middle of August. If you have it wasn’t for very long. You would be overcome by heatstroke; next you would experience the sun burning a hole through your forehead almost the size of the one in the ozone layer. Followed by Death, I believe maybe inevitable. Well okay, at least that’s what I remember. For some older generations they state they endured this unbearable heat and teeth chattering cold because they were used to it. Oh no, no, I am not a penguin and anything above 90 degrees is hell. If I want to be in Hell, well there would be so many things I could do to get there. I Thank heavens again for inventors and designers like Willis Havilland Carrier and David Crosthwait.
Willis Havilland first designed the cooling system for interior structures and an improved cooling and heating system was designed by David Crosthwait. Of course we will give first dibbs(credit) to the Greeks who did a lot of firsts. But they designed a heating system by placing heated pipes under the floors. Ding Huan of the Han Dynasty in the 2nd century, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty had a cool hall( Liang Tian) built in 618-907. These early inventions by the Chinese, was mostly water powered cooling systems. Persia and the Muslim world used wind towers and wind catchers. In the 1200’s ventilators were common place in Egypt. In 1758 Benjamin Franklin and John Hadley experimented with evaporation and a mercury thermometer. Michael Faraday from Great Britain discovered when ammonia evaporated it could cool air when compressed and liquefied.
Wheeler and Strutt developed a hot air system by means of radiation, convection and conduction. To be precise, Strutt‘s invention was actually a ducted warm air central system and Wheeler invented the electric fan. John Gorrie came close to making an air conditioning unit by using a compressor to create ice. He obtained a patent in 1851. His invention had serious flaws and Gorrie had no finances left to make improvements. Okay with that said, let’s move on.
In 1902, Willis Havilland Carrier invented the unit everyone had been waiting for but just didn’t know it. The air conditioning unit controlled not only temperature but humidity. His design sent air through cold coils which were filled with cold water; the air wood blow around the coils creating cold air. Carrier founded The Carrier Air Conditioning Company of America, copied the term “Air Conditioning” from Stuart W Cramer who coined the term in his patent filed in 1906 for “water conditioning”.
Then there is David Crosthwait, a black American born in 1891. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in science 1913, and a master in engineering from Purdue University in 1920. He later in 1975 was given a honorary doctorate from Purdue. In 1913, Crosthwait worked on heating systems. He designed them for the Durham Company in Marshall town, Iowa. He became the director of the research department from 1925-1930.
He has over 39 patents from refrigeration and heating systems and vacuum pumps. He specialized in Air ventilation, central air conditioning and heat transfer and other temperature regulating devices. He wrote a manual on heating and cooling with water. Throughout the years he had designed various heating systems. He was commissioned to design a heating system for Radio City Music Hall. Upon retiring in 1971, Crosthwait began teaching courses on control systems and steam heating theories. He continued to teach until his death in 1976.
I must say to all the people who endured in the era prior to modern central cooling and heating systems, my hats off to you. Forget cell phones and computers the suffrage alone deserve my admiration.
