The Americans

"An air conditioning system feasible for general use would be a by product of efforts to solve certain specific problems of industry. Textile manufacturers had found that to keep their fibers soft and stretchable, to prevent the broken ends that required costly stoppage of their machines, they had to control the moisture content of the yarns. A fiber with just the right percentage of moisture was strong and pliable, and to damper the fiber properly was called 'yarn conditioning.' In 1906, when an American textile engineer invented a system for accomplishing this by controlling the humidity in the air, he called it 'air conditioning,' and the name stuck.

For air conditioning, unlike many other inventions in indoor living, the theoretical as well as the practical advances were made in the United States. The man who developed the theory, who devised the machinery, and then envisioned the human possibilities of air conditioning, was William H. Carrier." Daniel Boorstin The Americans: The Democratic Experience

Knew who invented air conditioning but not the backstory.