Whirlpool 🇺🇸

Whirlpool is the silent giant of the American window unit: the factory of many appliances that bore another name. Louis and Emory Upton founded Upton Machine Company on November 11, 1911 in Michigan to make electric roller washers; in 1916 Sears began selling them under its own brand and that partnership marked a century. The company merged in 1929 into Nineteen Hundred Corporation, adopted the name Whirlpool around 1949‑50 and in 1955 merged with Seeger Refrigerator and bought from RCA its air‑conditioning and kitchen lines, giving rise to the brand “RCA Whirlpool” and its entry into the window unit.

The Whirlpool window units — and the Sears Coldspot and Kenmore since 1961 — came out of the old Seeger plant in Evansville (Indiana), the former International Harvester factory nicknamed “the refrigerator,” where in 1963 it installed Seeger rotary compressors. In 1986 it moved that production to Tennessee and continued manufacturing for Sears and for third parties such as Comfort‑Aire during the nineties, while Evansville closed in 2009.

In 2006 it absorbed Maytag (with Amana and Jenn‑Air) and in 2017 ended its century‑long relationship with Sears. Curiosity: in 1955 it was Fedders that manufactured part of the Whirlpool‑Seeger units, so the major third‑party manufacturer also bought from third parties.

Pending verification

Whether Whirlpool still manufactures window units today under its own brand or licenses them to third parties.

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