General Electric 🇺🇸

General Electric entered the domestic cooling market with the 1927 "Monitor Top" refrigerator, of which it sold more than one million units by 1933, and almost simultaneously explored room air conditioning: between 1930 and 1931 engineer Frank Faust built 32 prototypes of a self‑contained "room cooler," an improvement on Frigidaire's bulky Room Cooler. But the GE remembered by enthusiasts is the post‑war one, the one at Appliance Park in Louisville (Kentucky), where in 1958, after a $40 million expansion, it began assembling window units.

In 1956 GE and Vornado were the first to offer a “thin” range of window units: the “Thinline” series, which swept the market that year and was produced until 1963. In 1957 their engineers developed two technologies that shaped the industry: the GE rotary compressor, with a bipolar motor running at 3,450 rpm in a compact housing, from which modern rotaries descend, and the “spine‑fin” aluminum coils, with a much larger heat‑exchange surface than conventional finned coils. Both debuted in 1958 in the “Custom Thinline” or “Lo‑Thinline”, much slimmer, alongside the portable “Thinette” (ironically powered by a Tecumseh) and the “Zoneline 26”, a Custom Thinline inside a wall‑covering cabinet with a decorative external grille: the seed of the hotel PTAC.

In 1963 GE replaced the Thinline with the enlarged “Lo Thinline”, the wall-mounted “Zoneline” series, the reissue of the Thinette, the first side-sash window model, and the large “Superline”. By around 1968 it standardized the spine‑fin batteries made entirely of aluminum, and in the seventies it popularized the lightweight portable “Carry‑Cool”. In 1982 it sold its central air‑conditioning division to Trane —the red Climatuff compressors went with it—, and 1987 was the last year General Electric manufactured window units: it closed the air‑conditioning and rotary‑compressor lines at Appliance Park (building AP6), subcontracted the models to Asian manufacturers, and in 1988 sold the Columbia (Tennessee) plant where the Carry‑Cool were made to Fedders for 17.3 million.

The Zoneline, on the other hand, never died: it was manufactured in Louisville until 1987, returned to Appliance Park in 2015 with a new design and today comes out of the Monogram plant in Selmer (Tennessee). In 2016 GE sold its entire appliance business to the Chinese Haier for about 5.400 billion dollars (5.600 at the close, June 6), so a current “GE” air conditioner is from GE Appliances, a Haier company. For the collector, the 1956 Thinline and the 1958 Custom Thinline are foundational pieces: the window unit stopped being a huge box and became a fine piece of furniture with a prestigious brand.

In Spain

General Electric did not manufacture air conditioning in Spain—its industrial presence was General Eléctrica Española, of turboalternators and heavy equipment, which advertised in the press of the 60s—but its domestic and commercial units were sold in quality stores of the 70s. The clearest evidence is the air‑conditioning catalog of Casa Edison, the shop of Joaquín Clavell Borràs in Barcelona, whose cover reads “Aire acondicionado, Casa Edison, Joaquín Clavell Borràs” and whose side tabs organize the offer by brands: “General Electric acondicionadores por unidades separadas”, “General Electric fuentes de agua fría” and “Gibson aparatos de ventana”, in addition to Roca and Delchi. “Unidades separadas” is the translation of the 70s term that Crolls called “partido” and that we now call split: GE sold two‑piece units in Barcelona when most of the market was still in the window. The cold‑water source page lists fourteen models (BT‑1, JSA‑3, PT‑3, RSA‑6, PF‑6, RSA‑20…) with capacities of up to 84 liters per hour “para oficinas e industrias”.

A technician recalled in 2009 the “aluminum‑spiked” batteries of the old American units, a technology that GE shared with Amana, and today’s multi‑brand service shops still include “general electric” in their lists of old brands they repair. GE sold its appliance division to Haier in 2016; in Spain there is no air conditioning today with its name.

A GE advertisement in the Spanish press from the 60s or 70s still needs to be located; the Casa Edison catalogue is, for now, the only document that proves the sale of its splits and units in the country.

The only piece located, but eloquent, is the “Casa Edison air conditioning advertising catalogue, Joaquín Clavell Borràs – Roca, Delchi… 1970s” from todocoleccion, measuring 24 x 21 cm, with a night photograph of the store and interior pages photographed: the “General Electric Cold Water Sources” page, with a table of models and capacities, and the tabs “General Electric conditioners by separate units” and “Gibson window units on the back”. A clipping from the 1960s of General Eléctrica Española (turboalternators) documents the industrial presence of the brand, not related to air conditioning. In the second‑hand listings and technical service ads on Milanuncios, General Electric appears among the old brands that are still repaired.

The relevant part of the catalogue is the terminology: “air conditioners by separate units” is the expression with which a Barcelona shop in the 70s described a two‑piece system, and it coincides in time with Crolls’ “partido” (1969‑1972) and Ariagel’s “portable climate” with an external condenser. Three different names for what was not yet called split, in three catalogues from the same decade, demonstrate that the direct expansion in two units was already being offered to Spanish consumers well before Japanese brands popularized it in the 80s. The table of cold‑water sources, with models from 8 to 82 liters per hour “for offices and industries” and a column of “service, number of people”, also reminds us that in those catalogues air conditioning and cold water were sold together as office comfort.

Pending verification

If GE managed to market room appliances between 1931 and the war, and which Asian manufacturers produced GE appliances between 1988 and 2016.

History machine-translated from Spanish. Can you improve it? Write to us.