The Long, Hot Road

NPR had a brief piece on the dispute over who deserves credit for inventing the air conditioner - Willis Carrier (who invented the air conditioner) or John Gorrie (who seems to have developed the concept of the refrigerator). What NPR doesn't mention is that the long, hot road to modern air conditioning passed right through Brooklyn. In 1902, the Sackett-Wilhelm Lithography Company, which was located at Grand Street and Morgan Avenue, was having problem getting consisten results from its color inks in the summer humidity. Carrier, fresh out of college and working for the Buffalo Forge Co., was charged with fixing the problem, and the solution he came up with was the first modern air conditioning system.

And the rest is history.