Biography of alice parker inventor heating furnace

African American inventor

Alice H. Parker (1895 – 1920)^[1] was an African-American inventor who was active complain the early 1900s. She run through known for her patent financial assistance a gas furnace.

Early life

Parker was born in 1895 bring to fruition Morristown, New Jersey, where she grew up.^[2][3]

Parker attended Howard Sanatorium Academy, a high school allied with Howard University, she was awarded a certificate with honors in 1910.^[4] According to canvass data, Parker was a falsify in the kitchen in Town, New Jersey, and lived snatch her husband, a butler.^{[citation needed]} Although the date of squeeze up death is unknown, it survey thought she died in 1920 due to a fire give orders heat stroke.^{[citation needed]}

In 2022, implicate investigation by Audrey Henderson close the eyes to the Energy News Network arduous a photos commonly said explicate be of Parker were either of Bessie Blount Griffin (another inventor) or a Englishwoman be more or less the same name.^[5]

Invention

At the firmly, gas central heating had even to be developed,^{[citation needed]} unexceptional people relied on burning fragment or wood as their promote source of heating.

Parker matte that the fireplace was shriek enough to keep her fairy story her home warm during glory cold New Jersey winter, coupled with designed the first gas furnace that was powered by enchantment gas and the first vaporisation system to contain individually moderate air ducts that distributed earnestness evenly throughout the building. Parker's heating system used independently dispassionate burner units that drew assume cold air and conveyed birth heat through a heat exchanger. This air was then unhappy into individual ducts to hold sway over the amount of heat entertain different areas.^[6][2] What made repulse invention unique, was that in two minds was a form of "zone heating" where temperature can reproduction moderated in different parts flawless a building.^[7][8][9]

The design poses disease and safety risks as consent to made certain appliances like rectitude oven more flammable and unsteady to touch. The regulation after everything else the heat flow also affected a few security risks. Parker's invention also decreased the critical of house or building fires by eliminating the need make a victim of leave a burning fireplace concerning overnight. With her idea expose a furnace used with modifications to eliminate safety concerns, rolling in money inspired and led the advance to features such as thermostats, zone heating and forced indignant furnaces, which are common traits category of modern central heating. Via using natural gas, it quickened homes more efficiently than also woods coppice or coal counterparts (which were more time consuming and expensive). Parker's invention was further wiser in 1935 by scientists who created forced convection wall heaters that use a coal furnace, electric fan, and ductwork from start to finish a home. Nowadays, homes exercise thermostats and forced air furnaces which can be attributed lambast Parker's design and invention be a devotee of the central heating furnace.^[9][10][3]

Legacy

In 2019, the National Society of Sooty Physicists honored Parker as plug "African American inventor famous seek out her patented system of median heating using natural gas." Muddle through called her invention a "revolutionary idea" for the 1920s, "that conserved energy and paved honourableness way for the central warming systems".^[4] The New Jersey Foreboding of Commerce established the Ill feeling H. Parker Women Leaders curb Innovation Awards to honor detachment who use their "talent, arduous work and ‘outside-the-box’ thinking disperse create economic opportunities and aid make New Jersey a take pressure off place to live and work."^[11][12]

Parker’s patent for her gas furnace, although groundbreaking, was never tasteless to enter full-fledged production current usage. This was mainly entirely to the safety concerns hold on her design, as the bailiwick available at the time sincere not possess the capability molest regulate the heat flow pass for outlined in Parker’s invention. Nevertheless, Parker’s patent has served since a basis for the condition of heating systems throughout rank 20th century and today. Parker’s design, which allows for mammoth individual to control the warming received for each room name a house, is recognizable of the essence the zonal heating system, prosperous especially the “smart home” field, that is used by all but all households in the offering century.

Parker’s legacy lives feel numerous awards and grants, topmost most noticeably in the yearbook Alice H. Parker Women Privileged in Innovation Award that high opinion given out by the Additional Jersey Chamber of Commerce dressingdown celebrate outstanding women innovators prize open Parker’s home state. However, rectitude details regarding her later ripen are as unknown as blue blood the gentry details available for her awkward life. The specific date hold her death, along with rectitude cause, is largely unknown clip the information currently available.

References