It sounds like a much more recent invention, but air conditioning is actually well over a century old. To be precise, on 17 July 1902, that is 119 years ago, the first system for cooling closed environments was designed, let's say the forerunner of modern air conditioning which obviously has other technologies. It was designed and then patented (but only in 1906) by the American engineer Willis Haviland Carrier. Born in Angola (not the African state, but the small town in New York State) in 1876, Carrier changed the lives of billions of people at the age of just 25: he had just finished his studies on humidity 'air when he began to reason about a system to combat the heat indoors. A problem that today, with the average increase in temperatures globally and with the increasingly frequent waves of torrid heat in the summer, we know very well. Although initially Carrier's goal was not to fight the heat, but to keep some spaces cool because, working with a color printer, he had noticed that the heat altered the quality of the photographs.
His idea was therefore to develop a device equipped with two batteries of tubes: the first battery contained cold water, the other was crossed by water refrigerated by the evaporation of ammonia. Carrier's invention provided for a continuous circulation of the various liquids and therefore the air was dried - that is, deprived of humidity - and cooled even for long periods of time. Thus it was the first air conditioning, which was initially installed only in American public hospitals, while the first domestic system was only built in 1914 in a house in Minneapolis, Minnesota. From that moment the use was cleared for any type of building: in 1915 Carrier and six other engineers founded the Carrier Engineering Corporation in New Jersey, among which customers immediately included the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States and many others important buildings.
In the 30s Carrier moved the company to Syracuse, New York, where it is still headquartered today. Subsequently, it opened branches in Japan and South Korea. The Far East is today the main market for air conditioning systems.
