john gorrie inventions - ancient

Who Do We Thank For Air Conditioning?

23.02.01

Dr. John Gorrie of Florida developed an ice making machine that blew air over a bucket of ice to cool hospital rooms of patients suffering from yellow fever in the late 1840s.  He was convinced that the cooling would heal patients because the disease usually came and went with the change of seasons. A similar ice machine was used to cool President James Garfield’s room when he was dying. Although this invention was successful in lowering the temperature of a room, it required an unreasonable amount of ice to operate. By 1902, the first modern air conditioning system was developed by Willis Carrier of Angola, N.Y. Carrier was originally employed by a heating company and was assigned to create a machine that would cool a printing plant where the heat caused the ink to bleed. Carrier developed a mechanical humidity controller that passed air through a filter then over coils containing a coolant. This model serves as the basic design used in air conditioners today. Carrier was not the first to design something like this, but his creation was the most safe and stable. Older versions of this air conditioning unit were big, expensive and dangerous because they used a toxic ammonia as a coolant. By 1922, Carrier improved on his invention by replacing the toxic ammonia with a safer coolant and making the unit more compact. He also created a centrifugal air chiller that was able to cool larger spaces and was used in department stores and factories. Adjustments and improvements have been made to Carrier’s original design to create the modern air conditioner that we all greatly appreciate today.  What started off as a fan blown over ice to cool off yellow fever patients has turned into one of the inventions that we cannot live without. Even today, scientists and engineers continue to make adjustments to the air conditioner to create the safest and most successful unit possible.

Source: Western Queens Gazette