In the midst of a heatwave in midsummer Sydney, temperature at 45.5 degrees Celsius, my friend and colleague Jacki Fortune writes: “Spare a grateful thought for Willis Carrier, inventor of air conditioning.”Certainly his creation can make life so much easier in sub-tropical Australia, where the temperature soars for a while, and often with it the humidity. But in real tropical climates, where temperature and humidity are constantly high, aircon is not so much a convenience as a necessity. In Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and a dozen other countries, it creates conditions in which WORK and THINKING can take place. It’s not surprising that, before its arrival, these economies were based only on fishing and farming.
I would even say that the economic miracle of recent decades in South-East Asia simply could not have occurred without air conditioning.
Willis Carrier? He was an American engineer, born in 1876. And his breakthrough drawings were made in 1902. He was granted a patent four years later and continuously improved his “Apparatus” in the following years. Carrier and six colleagues formed a company in New York in 1915. For the first two decades of air conditioning, it was used to cool machines, not people. He died in 1950 with eighty patents to his name.
Not so famous as Thomas Edison. But what a legacy.
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