Air conditioning
In 1902, the first modern electrical air conditioning unit was invented by Willis Carrier in Buffalo, New York. After graduating from Cornell University, Carrier found a job at the Buffalo Forge Company. There, he began experimenting with air conditioning as a way to solve an application problem for the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing and Publishing Company in Brooklyn, New York. The first air conditioner, designed and built in Buffalo by Carrier, began working on 17 July 1902.
Seichi Konzo
Seichi "Bud" Konzo (1905 – 1992) was a professor of engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1929-71 and a pioneer in the field of home heating and cooling. He lived in the first air-conditioned house in North America in 1933. His research spanned the decades of the 1920s to the 1990s.