Historical Figures of the Building Services Industry

The Father of Modern Air Conditioning.

Carrier was born on a farm in Angola in New York State and won a State Scholarship to Cornell University where he graduated with degree of M.E. in Electrical Engineering in 1901. 

He joined Buffalo Forge Co where, in 1906, he was granted U.S. patent 808,897 for an Apparatus for Treating Air, which was for treating humidity by either heating or cooling water. 

Carrier published his paper Rational Psychrometric Formulae (ASME, 1911), and the famous Buffalo Forge Fan Engineering (1914).

He founded Carrier Engineering Corporation in 1914 and went on to take air conditioning, which had been initially for industrial applications, into the comfort business in cinemas, department stores and restaurants. 

He patented the high-pressure air washer (1906); the centrifugal water chiller (1922); pioneered air conditioning for railway coaches and passenger liners (1930); introduced unit air conditioners for the home, and high velocity induction systems for offices (1939).

With Realto Cherne and Walter Grant, Carrier wrote the best known of all air conditioning textbooks, Modern Air Conditioning, Heating and Ventilating (1940). 

Preston was born in Westmorland, educated near Warrington and apprenticed to the heating and ventilating firm of A Seward & Co of Lancaster. He won first prize in the Assistants’ Competition promoted by the IHVE for two years running (1906-7).

During these years he also won the Saxon-Snell Prize of the Royal Sanitary Institute and their special prize for his paper, Heating & Ventilating of Public Buildings.

He went on to join Jones & Attwood of Stourbridge, helping Walter Jones in his technical research and later took charge of the heating department of Maguire & Gatchell Ltd, Dublin (1910), before becoming a director of Mumford Bailey & Preston. He broke away to set up his own contracting business (1924), later turning it into a consultancy practice. He developed an electric air speed meter (1907), a double-duct air conditioning system (1909), and a Heating Main Calculator (slide rule).

Preston was President of the Institute of Heating and Ventilation Engineers (IHVE) in 1929.

Inspired the study of thermodynamics

Thompson was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, USA and fought on the side of the loyalists in the American Revolutionary War. His military background led to experiments on gunnery and explosives which transferred to an interest in heat. His “An Inquiry Concerning the Source of the Heat Which Is Excited by Friction” was ground-breaking scientific paper that challenged established theories of heat and began the study of thermodynamics, a branch of physics that studies the relations between heat, temperature, and energy.

Author of Principles of Warming and Ventilating Public Buildings (1824)

Tredgold was born in County Durham and started his profession as an apprentice carpenter. He then started working for his uncle, William Atkinson (an architect best known for country houses in the Gothic style.)

During the decade from 1815, he published many technical papers, on elasticity and strength of materials, on flow of fluids and on heat. Apart from books on carpentry, cast-iron, railways and the steam engine, he published the paper Principles of Warming and Ventilating Public Buildings, which transformed an empirical art into a numerate technology and brought together engineering, physiology and comfort.

Tredgold gave an influential definition of civil engineering, on which the charter of the Institution of Civil Engineers based itself.

George Nelson Haden, who liked to be known as Nelson Haden, was born in Trowbridge, England. He was apprenticed into his father's (George) and uncles’ (James) firm of G & J Haden at the age of 14. Their business was manufacturing and erecting thousands of warm air ventilating stoves in mansions, churches, banks, colleges and public buildings.
Nelson Haden took over control of the firm following his uncle’s retirement in 1855, and father’s death in 1856. Nelson expanded the family business, opening branch offices in London, Manchester and Birmingham.

Under Nelson’s management, G & J Haden worked many famous architects of the Victorian period including George Gilbert Scott and were contracted for works in the Manchester Assize Courts, The Law Courts Strand London, St Pancras Station and Hotel and the Reading Rooms at the British Museum. The most notable of which is in the Manchester Assize Courts, which had the first spinning disk air washer to clean and cool the ventilation air. 

Haden opened a foundry (a workshop or factory for casting metal) in Trowbridge in 1874 to manufacture all the components necessary for the installation of heating systems.

In 1969 the company merged with the electrical firm of Troughton & Young to become Haden Young.  In 2009, Balfour Kilpatrick and Haden Young merged to become Balfour Beatty Engineering Services. 

Faber was born is London and studied civil, mechanical and electrical engineering at the City and Guild Engineering College. In 1909, he was awarded the D.Sc. degree of London University, for his research on “Reinforced concrete beams in bending and shear.”

He became Chief Engineer for Trollope & Collis Ltd in 1911 and was responsible for the design of offices, bridges, and reservoirs in England and in Shanghai.

He set up his consultancy in 1921 in London. Over the course of his career he worked on the rebuilding of the Bank of England, Church House in Westminster, South Africa House, and India House in London. Additionally, he worked on many factories during the inter-war years and during the Second World War.

For his services to the British army during the World Wars, he was created the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and a Commander of the British Empire

He co-authored the book, Reinforced Concrete Design, with P.G. Bowie in 1922.

In 1936, Faber co-authored Heating and air conditioning of Buildings with J.R. Kell, who was one of his staff at the time.

Faber was President of the IStructE (1936), the IHVE (1944–1945, serving two terms), a Member of the ICE and of the IMechE.

For more information about Oscar Faber, refer to his biography, written by his son John Faber: Faber, John, 1989. Oscar Faber: His Work, his firm & afterwards.

Patentee of High-Pressure Hot Water (HPHW) systems

Perkins was born in Newbury Port, Massachusetts, USA. He moved to England in 1829 making a living, with his father, engraving banknotes. His first of many British Patents was “Apparatus for heating air in Buildings”.

During the 1830s many of his HPHW systems, which had then become known as “The Perkins System”, had been installed in buildings – many new churches in South Wales were built (due to increased migration to the area in the 1840s) with these systems, some of which are still in use today.

The “Grandfather of Air Conditioning”

Reid was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and studied medicine at Edinburgh University.

A particular interest of his was applied physiology, and he devised an experimental chamber to investigate respiration and fresh air needs. He advocated the addition of various chemicals to ventilating air, including some to aid recovery in hospital wards, others to counteract the deleterious effects or vitiated air. He demonstrated his theories at a dinner in Edinburgh, and claimed that, because of his methods of ventilation, the diners consumed two or three times as much alcohol as usual, without ill-effect.

Reid’s most famous work was his scheme for ventilating the Palace of Westminster, where he introduced filtered and humidified air through holes in the floor, and extracted the vitiated ait out the chimney with a fire at the base. The heating and ventilating for St George's Hall in Liverpool uses the same system.

Phipson was born near Birmingham, England, but educated in Brussels and Paris, which were cheaper at the time.

In Brussels, he studied under Dr Van Hecke who discovered a new method of heating and ventilating hospitals in France and the Netherlands.

When Phipson’s family returned to England, he brought these ideas with him and tried to introduce the system to the Medical Officers of Health in London. He struggled to gain support until, with his father’s assistance, he was able to secure a contract to warm and ventilate Baron Rothschild’s residence and bank.

Other important installations followed: the Strand Music Hall, Glasgow University and Royal Holloway College, Egham. In London, his work included the Natural History Museum, the second Alexandra Palace, and the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square.

For more in-depth history, refer to the September 2015 edition of the CIBSE Journal.

Kell was educated in St Albans, England and joined Oscar Faber & Partners in 1926. As an employee, he was involved in the company’s building services design for the Bank of England, which involved on site electricity generation with waste heat recovery.

In 1936, Kell co-authored Heating and air conditioning of Buildings with Oscar Faber, who was his employer at the time. He became a partner of Faber’s company in 1948.

Kell was largely responsible for the air conditioning of the rebuilt House of Commons (1943–1950).

He was President of IHVE (1952) and remarked that of the forty-five Presidents to date, only five have been consultants. 

Having been associated with the Abbey Church at St Albans for many years, Kell has the unusual distinction of having his bust carved in stone, among the roof gargoyles. 

The Father of Gas Lighting

A Scottish inventor, Murdock joined the Birmingham engineering firm of Boulton & Watt (1777), helped Watt with the development of the steam engine and invented a practical slide-valve. While supervising the installation of engines in Cornish mines, eh began his experiments with coal gas, and he lit his office and cottage in Redruth by gaslight (1792).

He celebrated the temporary Peace of Amiens with Napolean (1802) by setting up a spectacular display of gas lights, later lighting the main factory, Soho Works by gas (1803). Boulton & Watt installed a gas-making plant for Phillips & Lee's cotton mill in Salford (1806), which was lit by 900 burners. Murdock made significant improvements to the gas-making process, including washing and purifying. His paper to the Royal Society (1808) describing the installation earned him the Society's Rumford Gold Medal.

Thompson was born in York, England and trained as a teacher at the Flounders Institute.

He was a leading author who wrote Elementary Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism (1881) and Dynamo-electric Machinery: a Manual for Students of Electrotechnics (1884.) His lectures on Light, visible and invisible to the Royal Institution were published as a book in 1896.

In 1899 he was elected President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers.

Born in Sunderland, Swan was a physicist and inventor, and a manufacturing chemist by profession. He originated a method of dry plate photography and attempted to produce light by electricity. He began by using thin strips of carbonised paper within an evacuated bulb (1848) and after many experiments had an electric light with a carbon filament (1860), some twenty years in advance of Edison. However, he was unable to keep it working. Eventually the techniques for producing a vacuum improved and Swan in England and Edison in the USA produced a practical incandescent bulb at about the same time (1879).

Swan lamps quickly gained popularity and were used in the House of Commons and the Savoy Theatre (1881). After various legal disputes, Swan and Edison settled their differences out of court and formed a joint UK company (1883), the Edison & Swan United Electric Light Co Ltd, to exploit their invention.

Gaster was born in Romania and educated in Bucharest. He is credited as the founder of Illuminating Engineer in 1908 and the Illuminating Engineering Society in 1909. (The IES later merged with IHVE to become CIBSE.)

Gaster gave a series of lectures at the Royal Society of Arts on Modern Methods of Illumination, where he emphasised the need for lighting specialists. 

In 1915, Gaster co-authored Modern Illuminants and Illuminating Engineering with J.S. Dow. 

Gaster remained with the IES until his death in 1928. 

More about Gaster, Dow and the IES can be found here. 

Bazalgette was born in London, England and was a practicing civil engineer, having worked on railway projects, and land drainage and reclamation to enable him to set up his own London consulting practice in 1842. He had experience in the UK and China. 

Bazalgette was responsible for the installation of a sewage system in London. This included enclosed underground brick main sewers to intercept sewage outflows, and street sewers, to divert the raw sewage which flowed freely through the streets and thoroughfares of London to the Thames. The work, which took place in the 1860s, was opened by Albert Edward, Prince of Wales in 1865.