Albert Butz

Albert Butz was a Swiss-born inventor who settled in Minneapolis in the late nineteenth century and became the intellectual progenitor of the modern thermostat. His 1885 patent for the 'damper flapper' — a thermoelectric furnace regulator that automatically maintained home temperature without manual tending of the coal fire — represented a fundamental advance in domestic comfort technology. Although Butz's own business ventures were commercially unsuccessful and he sold his patents for modest sums, the technology chain he initiated ran directly through the Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company and eventually to Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company, making him the indirect founder of one of America's largest industrial enterprises.

Albert Butz was born in Switzerland and immigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In 1885, working in a city whose harsh winters made home heating a daily preoccupation, he invented and patented the 'damper flapper' — a device that used thermoelectric principles to automatically regulate furnace temperature in residential buildings. He formed the Butz Thermo-Electric Regulator Company to commercialize the invention but struggled financially and ultimately sold the patents. Subsequent inventors and entrepreneurs built on Butz's fundamental concept, forming the Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company in 1893, which refined and commercialized the technology through the 1890s and 1900s. The Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company later merged with Mark Honeywell's Honeywell Heating Specialty Company in 1927 to form Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Company — the direct corporate ancestor of Honeywell International. Butz received no benefit from this eventual success, having parted with his patents early, but his invention established the foundational technology platform on which a $143 billion corporation would eventually be built.