When going home by train in the evening from the office, Carrier would so immerse himself in his problems that he frequently went through his home station. This happened so often that he was driven to moving his home to the terminal station on the line. Stories of Willis Haviland Carrier, J A E (Archie) Heard, CIBSE Heritage Group Collection.

Dr Willis Carrier, the Father of Air Conditioning, was born on a farm in Angola in New York State. He won a State Scholarship to Cornell University where he graduated with degree of Mechanical Engineer in Electrical Engineering (1901). He joined Buffalo Forge Co, later forming a subsidiary called Carrier Air Conditioning Co of America (1907). He published his paper Rational Psychrometric Formulae (ASME, 1911), and the famous Buffalo Forge “bible” Fan Engineering (1914). He founded Carrier Engineering Corporation (1914) and went on to take air conditioning, which had been  initially for industrial applications, into the comfort business in cinemas, department stores and restaurants. He patented the high-pressure air washer (1906); the centrifugal water chiller (1922); pioneered air conditioning for railway coaches and passenger liners (1930); introduced unit air conditioners for the home, and high velocity induction systems for offices (1939). With Realto Cherne and Walter Grant, Carrier wrote the best known of all air conditioning textbooks, Modern Air Conditioning, Heating and Ventilating (1940).

Founders of Carrier  Engineering Corporation         Back row left to right  Edmund Heckel     Ernest Lyle        Alfred Stacey jr         Front row left to right  Logan Lewis    Willis Carrier          Irvine Lyle   Edward Murphy

First Carrier  Commercial Refrigerating  Machine  1923

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J Roger Preston, 1878-1949

Preston was born in Westmorland, educated near Warrington and apprenticed to the heating and ventilating firm of A Seward & Co of Lancaster. He won first prize in the Assistants’ Competition promoted by the IHVE for two years running (1906-7). During these years he also won the Saxon-Snell Prize of the Royal Sanitary Institute and their special prize for his paper, Heating & Ventilating of Public Buildings. He went on to join Jones & Attwood of Stourbridge, helping Walter Jones in his technical researches and later took charge of the heating department of Maguire & Gatchell  Ltd, Dublin (1910), before becoming a director of Mumford Bailey & Preston. He broke away to set up his own contracting business (1924), later turning it into a consultancy practice. He developed an electric air speed meter (1907), a double-duct air conditioning system (1909), and a Heating Main Calculator (slide rule). Preston was a President of the IHVE (1929).