ASHRAE – HOUSTON (Formally South Texas) CHAPTER HISTORY - to DATE
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ASHRAE – HOUSTON (Formally South Texas) CHAPTER HISTORY - TO DATE By Bruce Flaniken Historian Emeritus October 26, 2013 (Previous authors/contributors included Clarence Fleming, Bruce Flaniken, Henry C. (Hank) Fry, Pat Powell, Neil Silverman and Chase Williamson) Contributions by the Houston & Texas Area to Region VIII HVAC&R Industry The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc., is celebrating its 119 th Anniversary and the Houston Chapter its 74 th Anniversary this year (2013). As you may imagine, the main interest a hundred years ago was HEATING, then VENTILATION, REFRIGERATION and with AIR CONITIONING dead last since there was no air conditioning at that point in time, except for ventilating breezes through open windows in rooms with high ceilings.. Heating was done by wood burning fireplaces which were replaced with cast iron radiant stoves burning wood and/or coal. As man became more and more concentrated into cities the need to control fire became ever more important, so steam boilers came into vogue for heating buildings. Steam boilers are typically large massive arrangements that require skilled operators so the 1 st , 2 nd and 3 rd Class Operating Stationary Engineers licenses were brought into being to keep large boiler installations under safe control and operation. Refrigeration was primarily a northern industry from frozen ponds and rivers in the more northern states, being harvested, stored and sold during warmer weather. River locations were used to provide rotating power from water wheel type of mills to machine shops in order to get the required motive power for rotating mechanisms prior to steam and electricity. As steam engine machines developed as a reliable means of rotating shaft power and heat sources, they began to be used as the power source for refrigeration and ventilation systems. Of all of the steam engines being used for this purpose in 1914 over 90% of them exceeded 15,000,000 calories/hour. By 1925 the electric motor was the preferred method of drive providing 62% versus 32% for steam engine drives while diesel and gas engines were used 4% and 2% of the time respectively. At that time ventilation was almost non-existent and controlled by the building orientation and placement of windows to catch the prevailing breezes. High ceilings and large open central staircases with ventilated domes provided some feeble assistance to gravity and Mother Nature. Ventilation did not really take off until later the mid-1880’s development and spread of electricity, although there was a kerosene powered fan sold by The Whirlwind Fan Company with the sales slogan “It will give you greater efficiency and enable you to do more and better work.” SOUTH TEXAS HVAC & R Industry 1851 to 1938 Texas inventors and machine shops did much of the early experimental work in the development of commercial refrigeration in the United States, although it was from Europeans (notably Scots, English, and French) that their theories were obtained. The development of mass production of artificial ice was pioneered in Texas and Louisiana. The most interesting refrigeration history related to Texas dates from 1861 to 1885. When the natural ice supply from the North was cut off by the Houston Chapter History to 2013 Page 1 ASHRAE – HOUSTON (Formally South Texas) CHAPTER HISTORY - TO DATE Civil War, men of ingenuity in Texas and Louisiana came forth with inventiveness in mechanical ice making and food preservation. During the war a Ferdinand Carré absorption machine, which had been patented in France in 1859 and in the United States in 1860, was shipped through the Union blockade into Mexico and eventually to Texas, where it was in operation in San Antonio. The Carré machine used a mixture of ammonia and water as a refrigerant. Around 1865 Daniel Livingston Holden installed a Carré machine in San Antonio and made several improvements on it. He equipped the machine with steam coils and used distilled water to produce clear ice. By 1867 three companies were manufacturing artificial ice in San Antonio. At that time there were only five other ice plants in the entire United States. About 1866 or 1867 Holden acquired the Peter Henri Van der Weyde compression patent, which used petroleum ether and naphtha as refrigerants, and in 1869 Holden took out a patent on his own designs. That year he also partially supervised the installation of a sixty-ton- capacity Carré plant in New Orleans. He extended his activities across Texas and into Louisiana and the South. After the Civil War the expanding Texas beef industry encouraged and financed the development of the mechanical cold process. Andrew Muhl of San Antonio, in partnership with a man named Paggi, built an ice-making machine there in 1867 before moving it to Waco in 1871. Development of mechanical refrigeration for the Texas meat industry began in the late 1860s in Dallas with Thaddeus S. C. Lowe's carbon dioxide machines, which had been used to inflate the balloons he had constructed for military purposes. Using dry ice made with carbon dioxide compressors, Lowe designed a refrigerated ship, the William Tabor , in 1868, in competition with Henry Peyton Howard of San Antonio, to carry chilled and frozen beef to New Orleans. Howard's steamship Agnes was fitted with a cold-storage room, twenty-five by fifty feet in size. Because the William Tabor drew too much water to dock in New Orleans harbor, Howard's ship was the first to ship beef successfully by refrigerated boat. Upon the shipment's arrival, Howard threw a banquet at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans in July 1869 and presented his transported beef to prominent diners. Because Lowe failed to accomplish his feat, he did not receive the proper credit for his attempt; however, the singular accomplishment of a refrigerator ship established the compressor process of refrigeration for ships delivering meat to New York and Europe. Carbon dioxide is nontoxic and nonflammable, and its use as a refrigerant was employed in marine service well into the twentieth century. Between 1871 and 1881 the first mechanically refrigerated abattoir in the United States was planned, established, and successfully operated in Fulton, Texas, for the purpose of chilling and curing beef for shipment to Liverpool, England, and other destinations. Daniel Livingston Holden, his brother Elbridge, and Elbridge Holden's father-in-law, George W. Fulton, took part in the development of this new process of beef packing and shipping. Thomas L. Rankin, of Dallas and Denison, held many patents in the area of refrigeration and had been involved in refrigeration work with Daniel Holden. From 1870 to 1877 Rankin worked on the development of refrigerator and abattoir service for rail shipping of refrigerated beef from Texas and the Great Plains. In late 1873 the Texas and Atlantic Refrigeration Company of Denison made the first successful rail shipment of chilled beef across the country from Texas to New York. The development made by Rankin and his Texas associates spread rapidly to other beef-shipping centers of the nation. Houston Chapter History to 2013 Page 2 ASHRAE – HOUSTON (Formally South Texas) CHAPTER HISTORY - TO DATE A pioneer in Texas, Gail Borden (1801-1874) became an inventor whose most notable contributions lay in condensing and preserving foods, particularly milk. Gail Borden was born in Norwich, N.Y., on Nov. 9, 1801. His family moved to Kentucky in 1814. Taught surveying by his father, he helped lay out the city of Covington. The family soon moved to Indiana Territory; Gail, Jr., served briefly as Jefferson County surveyor and taught school. In 1821 he moved to southwestern Mississippi for health reasons. He taught school and worked as a deputy U.S. surveyor for 7 years. Still searching for a better climate, Borden moved to Texas in 1829. After farming and raising cattle briefly, he returned to surveying. As Stephen Austin's superintendent of official surveys, Borden prepared the first topographical map of Texas. He headed the Texas land office from 1833 until the Mexican invasion. With his brother, Thomas, in 1835 he founded the first permanent Texas newspaper, the Telegraph and Texas Land Register, in San Felipe. The paper was soon moved to the new city of Houston, which Borden surveyed in 1836. After Texas separated from Mexico in 1836, Borden helped write its constitution. In 1837 he was appointed the first Texas collector of customs by President Sam Houston. Borden surveyed and planned the city of Galveston, continuing as customs collector. After his wife and children died in 1844 and 1845, Borden decided to alleviate the hardships of pioneers by making concentrated food that would not spoil. His first marketed product was a biscuit of dehydrated meat. At the first world's fair, the London Crystal Palace Exposition (1851), Borden's meat biscuit won him a membership in the London Society of Arts and a gold Council Medal, one of five awarded to Americans. The biscuit, tested by food specialists, retained nutrition and succulence indefinitely. The British saw in it a great, new American enterprise. Borden's biscuits were used by explorers and sailors, but his company failed in 1853 because competing suppliers of meat caused cancellations of army orders for the biscuits. Visiting the Shaker community at New Lebanon, N.Y., in 1851, Borden observed sugar making with airtight pans and decided that milk could be condensed and could remain wholesome indefinitely. In 1853 he applied for a patent on a process for extracting 75 percent of the water from milk and adding sugar to the residue. The patent was denied on the grounds that the process was not new. Three years later, after demonstrating that the use of vacuum pans was novel and essential to the process, he received the patent.