Margaret A. Wilcox
Margaret Wilcox patented her invention for a railway car heater in 1893. Her genius innovation redirected the heat generated from the train’s internal combustion engine to the interior of the passenger cars, which could become unbearably frigid on cold winter days. It also kept the windows free of frost and mist. Alas, the system had no controls and led to overheating in the cars, and thus was abandoned by the railway system because of safety concerns. But along came the automobile and, in 1917, engineers followed Wilcox’s design to heat the interior of the cars. The design was perfected when Ford began using her hot engine air model in 1929. Thus her invention became the predecessor for our modern automobile climate control systems.
