For more than a century the Trane name has identified products and technology that stretched the world's idea of what was possible – a tradition that's still very much with us.

In many ways Trane is a classic American success story that grew into a global one. It began with our founder, James Trane, a Norwegian immigrant who opened his own plumbing shop in La Crosse, WI, in 1885.

With the inspiration of cold Wisconsin winters, James Trane invented a new low-pressure heating system he proudly called the Trane Vapor Heating System. His son, Reuben, was just back from college with a degree in mechanical engineering, so father and son began manufacturing operations in 1910 and incorporated as The Trane Company in 1913. It was Reuben's invention of the convector radiator in 1923 that firmly established the company's reputation as an innovator, a reputation Trane people have been building on ever since.

Growth through innovation

The idea of using technology to give people relief from summer heat was a radical and unproven idea when Trane became an air conditioning pioneer in 1931.

Trane fundamentally changed the concept of air conditioning large buildings with the 1938 launch of Turbovac, the industry's first hermetic, centrifugal refrigeration machine. This was the beginning of a long chain of innovations leading to Trane's current CenTraVac®, the industry standard for large commercial air conditioning systems. This is the most energy efficient system available anywhere for large buildings and it has earned Trane the "Best of the Best" Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.