Albert Butz
Background
Albert Butz developed automatic temperature control in 1883, connecting a thermostat to a spring-driven motor that operated home furnace dampers as room temperature changed -- the 'damper flapper' invention that created the thermostat as a mass-market product. He filed his first temperature-control patent in 1885 and formed the Butz Thermo-Electric Regulator Company, incorporated in 1886, but left the business in 1888 after selling his patents to its stockholders. The company changed hands several times -- becoming the Consolidated Temperature Controlling Company, then the Electric Heat Regulator Company under W.R. Sweatt, who bought all its stock by 1900 -- before merging in 1927 with Mark Honeywell's heating-specialty business to form the Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company, the direct ancestor of the modern Honeywell. Butz's original 1885 patent -- covering a thermostat wired to a motorized damper -- is the foundational invention underlying every modern electronic thermostat, and the Butz Thermo-Electric Regulator Company he formed is the earliest direct corporate ancestor in Honeywell's controls lineage.