Refrigeration machines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries used reciprocating compressors to pump refrigerant (often toxic and flammable ammonia) throughout the system. There was a physical and economic limit to the size these "positive displacement" compressors could attain, so Willis Carrier looked elsewhere.
Most pumps in use at the time used rotating impellers that relied on centrifugal force to move whatever fluids they were moving. Why not apply the smooth efficient centrifugal compressor to a refrigeration machine instead of the back-and-forth motion of pistons still common in refrigeration machines?
As they say . . . the rest is history. The patents on Carrier's centrifugal refrigeration machine were filed in early 1921 and opened the door to the safe cooling of larger and larger structures.
Carrier's first production centrifugal chiller was sold to candy manufacturer Stephen F. Whitman & Sons of Philadelphia, Pa. on March 26, 1923. Not wanting to be outdone, a rival candy maker, William F. Schrafft & Sons of Boston bought one a month later. Carrier even sold his first experimental prototype centrifugal chiller to the Onondaga Pottery Company is Syracuse, N.Y. in 1924. That first machine is now on display in the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Science and Industry.
In 1985, Carrier was inducted into the National Inventors' Hall of Fame to honor his first patent and in recognition of later ones like the centrifugal chiller.
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