Although Buffalo Forge executives promoted Carrier to head their engineering department, they apparently failed to appreciate the gold mine they had just been deeded. When war clouds gathered in 1914, the nervous firm dropped its air conditioning subsidiary. Joined by his friend Irvine Lyle, who was to promotion what Carrier was to technology, the inventor formed his own corporation.

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During its first year, the Carrier Corporation received forty contracts for air conditioning systems, and by 1929 it had three factories. The twenties were years of splendid attention-grabbing achievements. Carrier air-conditioned Detroit’s J. L. Hudson department store in 1924, and in 1928 and ‘29 he cooled the U.S. House and Senate chambers. But his biggest opportunity to make a public impact with this new technology came in 1925, when he was approached by the Rivoli Theater in New York City.

In those days, as Carrier later explained, movies closed during hot weather or showed to such small audiences that they operated at a loss. Even on cool days the inside of the theater was hot if there were many people in the audience. The heat from the people was enormous. A few other theaters had already installed centrifugal refrigeration, but the Rivoli was Broadway. Success there would lead to recognition and financial rewards.

Carrier personally supervised the installation of the Rivoli’s 133-ton machine and stayed up all night before the scheduled Memorial Day debut. The system was late in starting, and the theater was still hot when the crowd filed in. Among the viewers was the head of Paramount Pictures, Adolph Zukor. From the wings we watched in dismay as two thousand fans fluttered, Carrier recalled. We felt that Mr. Zukor was watching the people instead of the picture–and saw all those waving fans! But the temperature gradually dropped, and the patrons lowered their fans. Carrier went into the lobby to watch Zukor emerge: When he saw us, he did not wait for us to ask his opinion. He said tersely, ‘Yes, the people are going to like it.’ During the next five years, a triumphant Carrier Corporation brought cooling relief to more than three hundred theaters.

Although most Americans first encountered the wonders of air conditioning in movie palaces, Carrier himself had developed the new technology for industry. The cooling of offices and homes, where mere people–not valuable products–wilted, remained too expensive. Yet Carrier realized that office air conditioning would be his next logical step. He was convinced that soon there would be a market for air conditioning tall buildings and that I had better design such a system. Edible fish were in sight, so I went fishing. The breakthrough came in the late 1930s with Carrier’s Conduit Weathermaster System, by which skyscrapers could be air-conditioned without encroaching upon valuable office space.

The final frontier for air conditioning was in the home, but Carrier failed to capitalize on this potentially lucrative market. Home cooling was possible (Carrier had chilled a millionaire’s mansion as early as 1914), but the price in the 1930s ran at least $1,500. Carrier did test the home market, but his atmospheric cabinet proved too large, costly, and unreliable. After losing $1.3 million pursuing this venture, he decided to concentrate on industrial and office buildings. Home air conditioning would come in the 1950s, but more consumer-oriented companies such as General Electric and Westinghouse would lead the way.

Carrier did not live to see their success. In September 1950 the holder of more than eighty air-conditioning patents suffered a heart attack that soon proved fatal.

When Carrier died, the press poured out well-deserved encomiums. But to this day, Americans everywhere honor the farm-boy-turned-engineer with even more eloquent praise–their exclamations of pleasure when, escaping the heat, they stand in front of the air conditioner and punch the button marked Cool.

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