Carrier Context:
History
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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?
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The 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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