"The cooling plant is revolutionizing picture show attendance in Houston!" said Will Horowitz, Jr., the Texas theater owner who asked Carrier to air condition The Palace, the Texan and the Iris theaters in 1924. "Patrons exclaim with delight when they get inside the doorway."
As Willis Carrier said, though, the acid test came when the young company was asked to air condition the famed Rivoli Theater in New York. The Rivoli's "cool comfort" was heavily advertised and block-long lines formed early on Memorial Day 1925 - nearly every patron was carrying cardboard fans, just in case. The film that showed that night was soon forgotten, but not the appeal of air conditioning. Summer film business boomed and by 1930, the 300 theaters Carrier had air conditioned were showing Americans they no longer had to settle for stifling indoor environments.
Owners of smaller businesses wanted to compete with larger retailers so Carrier began developing smaller "unit air conditioners" in the late 1920s. It was a small step in 1928 to the development of a residential "Weathermaker" that heated, cooled, humidified, cleaned and circulated air in homes, but the Great Depression quickly put an end to residential air conditioning.
Carrier's "unique" igloo in the 1939 World's Fair attempted to give visitors a vision of how their futures and air conditionings futures would mingle, but it was not until after World War II that sales of these smaller units for businesses and homes began increasing again.
Like many manufacturers, Carrier converted its production during World War II. Carrier systems were used in the vital production of synthetic rubber and in high-octance gasoline. Carrier chillers were removed from department stores (including Macy's), for installation in war production plants (they all got their chillers back after the war). Carrier air conditioning and refrigeration equipment was required for warships and cargo vessels, for munitions plants and for factories specializing in the production of such essential war material as bombsights and other precision instruments. Carrier made thousands of refrigeration units for walk-in coolers used by the Navy to keep perishables. Special portable coolers were made to permit the servicing of airplanes in hot climates. Carrier also turned out airplane engine mounts, sight hoods for guns, tank adapters and other military items.
Perhaps the greatest of all of Carrier's contributions to the war effort was something Willis Carrier called his own greatest engineering achievement. This was a system designed for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and installed in its wind tunnel to simulate freezing, high-altitude conditions for the testing of prototpe planes. In 1950 Dr. Carrier said, "Once, I accomplished the impossible...and because of its success, high officials in the Air Force told me that World War II was shortened by many months."
In recognition for it overall contribution to the war effort, Carrier was awarded the Army-Navy "E" six times, an honor attained by only 13 other companies. Other significant accomplishments during the 1940s-50s saw air conditioning systems shrink in size, allowing the cooling of ocean liners, buses, railcars, automobiles and even a traveling display for Gargantua the gorilla that amazed audiences in the U.S. and Europe.
But it wasn't until after World War II that Americans started wondering why they shouldn't be as comfortable at home as many of them were away from the home. Many of the advances in room and central air conditioning came in the 1950s. In 1955, William J. Levitt, then America's leading homebuilder, predicted that air conditioning would soom become a basic feature of American homes. He was right! By 1965, 10 percent of American homes were air conditioned. By 1995, more than 75 percent of American homes were air conditioned, and in some portions of the South, 90 percent of homes have comfort cooling.
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