Warren johnson
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Johnson, Warren S. 1847 - 1911 | Wisconsin Historical Society
Historical Essay
Johnson, Warren S. 1847 - 1911 | Wisconsin Historical Society
inventor; entrepreneur; founded Johnson Controls, Inc., a Fortune 100 company based in Glendale, Wisconsin. Johnson was born in Leicester, Vermont, on November 6, 1847. His family moved to Wisconsin in 1849 and lived in various locations; during his childhod, the Johnson family farm was located three miles west of Downsville, near the intersection of STH 72 and an unnamed town road.
A self-taught man, Johnson worked as a printer, a school principal in Menomonie, and as the New Lisbon Superintendent of Schools. In 1872-1873, Johnson, at the age of 25, was Dunn County Superintendent of Schools and a year later became Dunn County Surveyor, a position he held until 1875. In 1876 he became a professor at the State Normal School in Whitewater. While there, he developed a system of indoor temperature regulation that became the basis for the Johnson Electric Service Company (renamed Johnson Controls, Inc. in 1974), a business he founded with
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Warren S. Johnson
Warren Johnson was born in 1847 in Leicester, Vermont, to homesteading farmers. Two years later, the family moved to Wisconsin, where the largely self-taught Johnson would become a pioneer of temperature regulation technologies. His innovations and the company he co-founded, Johnson Controls, helped launch the multi-billion-dollar building controls industry.
In 1876, Johnson began teaching at Whitewater Normal School, where classrooms were heated by basement hot air furnaces. The system yielded fluctuating classroom temperatures; hand-operated dampers located at the basement furnaces were the sole, inefficient means of adjustment. Each hour, a custodian entered classrooms to assess temperature, then opened or closed dampers as needed. The ongoing disruption spurred Johnson to develop a practical solution, leading to his 1883 patent for the electric room thermostat. This eliminated hourly interruptions, but still required manual intervention. Johnson improved the electric room thermostat by incorporating compressed air with electricity which automated operatio
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Warren S. Johnson
American college professor
Warren Seymour Johnson (November 6, 1847 – December 5, 1911) was an American college professor who was frustrated by his inability to regulate individual classroom temperatures. His multi-zone pneumatic control system solved the problem. Johnson’s system for temperature regulation was adopted worldwide for office buildings, schools, hospitals, and hotels – essentially any large building with multiple rooms that required temperature regulation. To manufacture and market his system, Johnson established the Johnson Electric Service Company which eventually became Johnson Controls.
Early life
Johnson was born in Leicester, Vermont, on November 6, 1847. His family moved to Wisconsin three years later, eventually settling in Menomonie, Dunn County, Wisconsin. It appears that he had only limited formal educational training – but supplemented his knowledge with self-study of scientific subjects. He worked for a time as a printer, surveyor, schoolteacher, principal and school superintendent. In 1876, he obtained a teaching pos
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