Toshiba 🇯🇵

Toshiba was formed in 1939 with the merger of Shibaura Seisakusho (1875) and Tokyo Denki (1890), and its first domestic cooling appliance is the “Shibaura Room Cooler” of 1935. The Fuji factory in Shizuoka, opened in 1943, would be the cradle of its two major contributions. In 1953 it launched the one‑horse window unit RAC-101 and in 1961 the CLU-71, which Toshiba claims as the world’s first split domestic air conditioner: by moving the compressor to the outside, noise and vibrations in the room were eliminated, and the format became the industry standard. In 1969 it introduced the first unit with a rotary compressor (RAC-81B), sold from 1970 as “Kokage” (“in the shade”), and in 1978 the thinnest split of the time, at only 120 mm.

Its greatest achievement is the inverter. With power transistors and pulse‑width modulation controlled by a microprocessor, its engineers reduced the variable‑frequency drive to one‑sixth of the usual size. In October 1980 the first commercial inverter split was released (100 units in the first year) and in December 1981 the domestic RAS‑225PKHV, of which 10,997 units were produced in twelve months. IEEE recognized both as “Milestone” in 2021, with a plaque in Fuji’s R&D center. In 1989 the twin‑rotary compressor (RAS‑251BVR) arrived and in 1998 the domestic brand “Daiseikai”, with electrical air purification.

In 1999 Toshiba and Carrier created Toshiba Carrier Corporation (60/40), combining Japanese technology with the American commercial network. In 2022 Carrier bought Toshiba's stake for about 870-900 million dollars, Toshiba retained a 5 % share and the Fuji factory was renamed Carrier Japan; the Toshiba brand remains in VRF, semi‑industrial and domestic.

In Spain the Toshiba equipment was marketed through Carrier's network until, on October 1 2011, Toshiba HVAC was born, a division of the Swedish group G&L Beijer that acquired the distribution rights for eleven European countries. Today it is distributed by Beijer ECR Ibérica, with offices in Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga, Sevilla and Valencia; in December 2011, when the 30th anniversary of the inverter was celebrated, there were already more than 10,000 Toshiba VRF systems operating in Spain.

Pending verification

The claim of “world’s first domestic split” (1961) comes from Toshiba itself; Japanese industry chronologies place the first split units in 1959 without attributing a manufacturer. The distribution in Spain before 2011 via Carrier is inferred from Beijer having purchased the rights from Carrier.

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