Once again, though, the first machines were used to stabilize industrial processes like candy and pottery making. Mich. Shoppers at the store's popular basement bargain sales fainted from the heat as huge crowds overpowered the ventilation system. The sales became even more popular as three Carrier centrifugal chillers were installed to cool the basement and soon the rest of the store. Many Americans experienced air conditioning for the first time in theaters as owners struggled to revive summer business that always slumped as temperatures rose. The Palace, the Texan and the Iris theaters in 1924.
Patrons exclaim with delight when they get inside the doorway.
The Rivoli in 1925 As Willis Carrier said, though, the acid test came when the young company was asked to air condition the famed Rivoli Theater in New York. The film that night was soon forgotten, but not the appeal of air conditioning. Summer film business boomed and by 1930, the 300 theaters Carrier had air conditioned were showing Americans they no longer had to settle for stifling indoor environments. In 1955, William J. Levitt, the developer of Levittown, the largest and perhaps the first community of suburban tract homes, predicted that air conditioning would eventually be a basic feature of new home development, even though only about 430,000 homes had central air conditioning at the time. By 1965, more than three million single-family homes were air conditioned.