Dear Noralee & Neal (and other interested people on the Carrier List),
Many thanks for your encouraging words. I am most happy to share the
excerpts from the book "Father of Air Conditioning" as they relate to Willis
Carrier's background.
Here is more from where I left off in Chapter One:
"Willis Carrier was not a conformist even in those days. He remembered
his mother's advise: "Figure out things for yourself." Often, instead of
doing assigned lessons he worked on problems from more advanced textbooks he
found in the library of his home. When he ran out of problems he would make
them up for himself. One such was a formula for determining the day of the
week on which any date would fall in any century. He recalled: 'I had a
way of being far behind the other children. When they brought in their home
work with ten or more problems correctly solved, I'd only have one or
two--but I'd know my answers were right and why.'"
Willis entered into his work, play, and study with enthusiasm and it
never occurred to him that he could not succeed at anything if he tried hard
enough. In recalling how much energy he spend on each game and each
problem, he once observed: 'my conviction overcame my natural laziness.'
When he wrote his high school graduation essay in 1894, he titled it
"Circumstances the Mold: Man the Molder." Forty years later, as a guest
speaker at Angola High School, he referred to this graduation essay: 'My
thesis was that a man with power of will could make himself anything he
wished no matter what the circumstances. I know better now. I am here
tonight to recant. I never could be an expert golfer. I found this out by
trial and error. That, too, is education--to learn where one lacks
aptitude.'"
"When Willis was graduated from Angola Academy the nation was in a
financial depression. Milk had dropped to six cents a gallon and grapes to
ten cents a basket. The family farm was mortgaged and Willis had to help
out financially instead of going on to college. For nearly two years he
taught in one-room schools, living at home and paying for his board and
room. By 1896, his ambition to enter Cornell University seemed no closer to
realization than when he left the Academy. He had neither the money nor the
necessary entrance requirements."
"Willis Carrier overcame these obstacles by seizing upon an opportunity
presented by his stepmother, Mrs. Eugenia Tifft Martin, whom his father had
married when Willis was fifteen. A widow with three grown children, one of
whom was a veterinarian in Buffalo, she arranged for Willis to attend high
school in Buffalo by living with \this son and earning his board and room by
helping the family. In the fall of 1896 the farm boy moved to the city and
entered what was then known as Central High School. The following spring,
after competitive examinations, young Willis found himself the winner of a
state scholarship which paid his tuition at Cornell University for four
years. He still lacked funds for board, room, books, and clothing, but he
borrowed enough to enter a tutoring school at Ithaca, staking everything on
passing competitive examinations for one of the university scholarships
which provided funds for worthy students. He took the examinations and got
down to his last nickel before he learned that he was the winner of the H.
B. Lord Scholarship which proved him with two hundred dollars for each of
two years. Of the momentous windfall, Carrier later said: 'For the two
years which the scholarship lasted, I was not too badly off. Of course I
could not dress well. But I wore a clean collar every day--they were not
the celluloid collars, either, that some of the boys wore. I did not feel
sorry for myself because I had so little money, never felt inferior, never
was conscious of being snubbed. I was happy to have my chance to study
engineering.'"
Carrier got through Cornell by stretching his funds and taking on odd
jobs of almost all types. He mowed lawns, tended furnaces, tried waiting on
tables, and later became an agent for a boarding house. In his senior year
he and another student formed a cooperative student laundry agency and made
close to a thousand dollars each. Theirs was the first of the student
"co-ops" that operate on many campuses today. Willis spent two summers
selling stereoscopes and views; during another he worked on setting up plans
for the laundry agency."
"One college mate recalls seeing Carrier at Cornell "going across the
campus, a dark-complexioned chap, notebook or papers under his arm, and
always in a hurry, walking in long strides." He won medals in boxing and in
cross-country running, rowed on the senior class crew, passed all subjects
easily and with credit except for a "condition" in free-hand drawing when a
sophomore."
"Another friend of his college days recalls that "Carrier would start
explaining an idea in class and he was soon so far ahead of us all in his
thinking that not even the professor could keep up with him or understand
him." And another contemporary observed that "Willis was essentially a
man's man, but got on very well with the girls in his class--especially with
one of them, Claire Seymour." Willis Carrier and Claire Seymour became
engaged while students and were married slightly over a year after their
graduation from Cornell University in June of 1901--Carrier receiving the
degree of Mechanical Engineer in Electrical Engineering."
"Carrier began specializing in electrical engineering during his final
year and the subject of his senior thesis was the "Design and Construction
of an Alternating Current Wave-Tracer." In 1950 he explained, 'I had
planned to study electricity when still in Angola and chose it because it
was then a new art, much as electronics is today.' As his graduation neared
he thought of himself as ready to work in electrical engineering and wanted
to get a position with the General Electric Company. However, a
representative of the Buffalo Forge Company invited him and three other
Cornell seniors to visit the company's home office for employment
interviews."
"Carrier hesitated about deserting his long-made plans to specialize in
electricity. He weighed the pros and cons and, although he recognized that
by living at home his salary would go further, he concluded that he could
use his knowledge of electricity even though his prospective employers were
engaged in the manufacture of blowers, exhausters, and heaters. He accepted
the invitation to visit the home office of Buffalo Forge and around nine
o'clock on a June morning in 1901 was on his way. Carrier later related:
'Although I had lived in Buffalo, I had never heard of the Buffalo Forge
Company before and didn't know where the plant was located. So, when I took
the Broadway streetcar for the plant, I asked a fine appearing young man who
sat next to me if he know where Mortimer Street was and said that I was
going to the Buffalo Fore Company. He replied: "I will show you, as I am
going there myself." This young man said his name was Irvine Lyle and that
he was in the employ of the Buffalo Forge Company. He said that he had been
selling for them out of Syracuse and was considering a transfer to New York
City to take charge of the office there.'"
"It was a strange fate which brought together the two men who afterward
were to be instrumental in introducing air conditioning to the world."
Most of the rest of this book deals with the employment of Willis Carrier
and his development air conditioning and subsequently the Carrier Air
Conditioning Company.
I hope you all have enjoyed this extract from the book "Father of Air
Conditioning" and a peek into the life of Willis Carrier.
As always,
Debbie Johnson
Kirkville, NY