Carl Munters

Carl Georg Munters (1897 to 1989) was a Swedish inventor, best known for inventing, together with Baltzar von Platen, the gas absorption refrigerator now sold by Electrolux. Born in Dala-Jarna and a graduate of the Royal Institute of Technology in 1922, he worked with von Platen and John Tandberg on a domestic refrigerator with no moving parts, whose cooling cycle was driven by a heat source such as propane, electricity or kerosene. The first prototype took about a year to build and still had one moving part, a ball valve, but the improved design was a world sensation, and Albert Einstein is reported to have been astonished by it. Manufacture began in 1923 at AB Arctic, which Electrolux bought in 1925. Munters also invented extruded polystyrene foam, selling his United States patent to Dow in the 1940s, and in 1955 he founded his own company, which developed insulation materials, air conditioners and dehumidification devices. He held over a thousand patents at his death.