Westinghouse 🇺🇸

Westinghouse Electric, founded by George Westinghouse in Pittsburgh in 1886 and an eternal rival of General Electric, was one of the first major electric companies to experiment with home comfort. Its appliance division was created in 1917 when it bought the Copeman Electric Stove Company and moved it to Mansfield (Ohio). On July 1, 1931 its engineers presented a “house without windows” in which temperature, humidity and ventilation were combined to achieve a “perpetual spring,” and in 1937 the company put its first home air‑conditioning units on the market, including console units that were mounted in the window. World War II interrupted production in 1941.

When returning to the market, they didn’t fully trust the product: the Westinghouse units from 1954 to 1956 were actually manufactured by O. A. Sutton Corporation, the Wichita company famous for Vornado fans. In 1956 Westinghouse resumed in‑house production, and from its large‑appliance division in Columbus (Ohio) came the lines that collectors seek today: the slim “Streamliner” chassis of 1957; the “Mobilaire” of 1958, a window unit mounted on a height‑adjustable cart that could be rolled from one room to another and installed with accordion‑style side panels; the “Panelaire” series; the “Continental SS” of 1969, which hung outside and below the window so as not to block the view; or the “Super Heavy Duty” high‑capacity models, some manufactured by Heat Controller.

The Westinghouse name was also one of the most widely licensed in the sector: around the world refrigerators and air conditioners were manufactured “under Westinghouse license,” and in Australia the brand is still alive in appliances. In the United States, however, the venture ended in 1975, the last year Westinghouse Electric produced window units. On March 1 of that year White Consolidated Industries (WCI), a Cleveland conglomerate that had started with sewing machines, acquired the assets of the appliance division, and from the 1976 range the appliances were renamed “White‑Westinghouse.” Two details close the circle: in 1981 York bought Westinghouse’s central air‑conditioning business, and in 1986 Swedish Electrolux absorbed WCI for $742 million, taking White‑Westinghouse, Frigidaire, Gibson and Kelvinator in a single package.

Westinghouse Electric became CBS in 1997 and since 1998 the brand has been managed through Westinghouse Licensing Corporation: any current “Westinghouse” air conditioner is a licensed product with no connection to the Columbus factories. For the enthusiast, a Mobilaire with its cart or a Continental hanging from a window are among the most recognizable pieces of classic American air conditioning.

In Spain

Westinghouse is one of the most cited names by Spanish enthusiasts when talking about the origins of national air conditioning, and also one of the worst documented. What we do know for sure is how the Pittsburgh brand entered autarkic Spain: through the Basque white goods line. The reference study on the Spanish appliance industry notes that Westinghouse contributed its technology as a market entry route in Spain, and the Basque press recalls that Frimotor, in Erandio, manufactured refrigerators under Westinghouse license competing with Fabrelec‑Edesa of Basauri. Frimotor went down in history for the worst reason: in 1967 the partial collapse of its facilities caused 17 deaths and dozens of injuries, one of the most serious workplace accidents in Euskadi. Years later, at the Basauri plant of Edesa, thermoses were also manufactured with the White‑Westinghouse brand.

Air conditioning is another story. Among technicians and collectors circulates the belief that Interclisa, the great Madrid manufacturer, started in the mid‑60s with a Westinghouse license, and it is plausible —Westinghouse was then a major manufacturer of window air conditioners in the United States and licensed its technology worldwide—, but we have not found any advertisement, catalog, or record to support it, so we record it as oral tradition. We have also not found any other Spanish manufacturer that claimed to produce Westinghouse air devices in the 60‑80.

In the United States, the appliance division passed in 1975 to White Consolidated Industries, which created the White‑Westinghouse brand, and in 1986 to Electrolux, which turned it into a licensed brand. Through that route it returned to Spain: in the 2000s and 2010s “White‑Westinghouse” splits appeared on the market, imported from Asia and distributed by wholesalers, with their own service networks, which have little to do with the Pittsburgh engineers’ Westinghouse. For the enthusiast, the lesson is twofold: the grandparents’ Westinghouse was a Basque refrigerator, and the parents’ Westinghouse was an imported split with a borrowed name.

The period advertising dismantles the idea that Westinghouse was only a Basque refrigerator: it was the first air conditioner manufactured in Spain that we have been able to document. A 1955 magazine page, under the headline “See it coming… Summer,” presents the “Unitaire air conditioner, manufactured by Frimotor, S.A.E. with Westinghouse licenses,” a vertical cabinet “easy to install and aesthetically pleasing” for “your business, for your industry.” In 1959 another page, “Two worlds separated by a wall,” announces “the new window air conditioner that Frimotor, S.A.E. makes with the Westinghouse technique” and invites you to admire it “at the exhibition of Frimotor’s local distributor.” The Erandio company, which according to the industrial heritage inventory of Bizkaia manufactured under Westinghouse license refrigerators, washing machines and air conditioners with more than 750 workers, was therefore making cabinet and window conditioners since the mid‑50s.

In the ’60s the brand began selling the American unit. In the Reader's Digest Selections of July 1966 it asked “1,260 frigorías per hour of cooling power with this?” about a unit “that weighs less than 27 kg and measures less than 49 cm wide,” and in 1965 and 1967 it insisted: “The real one is only 4½ times larger (but cools a 3 × 4 room),” with the Custom Mobilaire model, the Westinghouse Electric International firm of New York, and the slogan “You can be sure it’s Westinghouse.” All lead at the bottom to the Spanish distributor: DYSESA, Distribución y Servicio de Aparatos Domésticos, S.A., box 1220, Bilbao, that is, the Biscay orbit of Frimotor. In 1969 the advertisement “No discussion: Westinghouse. The Westinghouse Custom air conditioner is small and quiet. But safe” listed a price: 13 975 pesetas, “which makes it another household appliance.” There are also sheets from 1966, 1970 and one on the back of a Winston advertisement from 1969.

A veteran technician listed Westinghouse among the “now dead” brands he had taken apart in 2009, and added that “several of these brands were manufactured in Spain.” In the case of Westinghouse, the advertising confirms this for 1955‑1959.

Pending verification

The price paid by WCI in 1975 (sources range from “more than 54 million” to 700 million dollars) and the exact location of the window‑unit factory prior to 1956.

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