Amana 🇺🇸

Amana takes its name from the Amana Colonies in Iowa, seven villages founded by a German pietist community. There, in Middle Amana, George C. Foerstner founded the Electrical Equipment Company in 1934 with $3,500 to manufacture beverage coolers and cold rooms after the end of Prohibition; in 1936 he sold it to the Amana Society and around 1950 he bought it back with a group of investors as Amana Refrigeration, Inc.

Its milestones: the first domestic vertical freezer (1947), the two‑door side‑by‑side refrigerator (1949) and, from 1954, air‑conditioning units. In 1965 it was bought by Raytheon, which had invented the microwave, and in 1967 Amana launched the domestic Radarange, the first popular home microwave.

In 1997 it passed to Goodman Global, a Houston air‑conditioning manufacturer, which in 2001‑2002 sold the white‑goods line to Maytag and kept the air‑conditioning business; Maytag was absorbed by Whirlpool in 2006. That is why today two Amanas coexist: the Whirlpool appliances and the Goodman air‑conditioning equipment—including hotel PTAC units—owned by the Japanese company Daikin.

In Spain

Amana, the Iowa brand famous for inventing the domestic microwave, had a discreet but legendary quality presence in Spain among technicians. Its Spanish ads from the 1970s —one from 1976 titled “There is an Amana quality, air conditioners for rooms, precisely for your home or office”— present two series of window units with wooden fronts: the Series 200 Air Command, “The Silent Ones,” of 3,800 and 4,500 frigorías, “in 50 or 60 cycles, easy chassis access, thermostatic control, automatically cools to the desired temperature, program it and forget about it,” and the Series 600 Air Command, of 5,200 and 6,000 frigorías at 50 cycles (3,500 to 7,300 at 60), with three fan speeds and “models for cooling and heating.” The ad highlights “the exclusive electrolytic Amana finish” against rust and presents the range alongside the company’s refrigerators and microwaves, “a Raytheon company,” with Amana’s address, Iowa, for “write or telegram.”

The professional side is recounted by a Mallorcan technician in a forum in 2009: his company “had exclusive rights throughout Spain for the Hitachi and Amana (American) brands”; the Amana “imported from the U.S. were rooftop-type solutions from 12,000 frig/h and up, excellent!”. And he recalled having dismantled “a window-type unit with 17 years, brand Amana”: he was surprised “by how light it was”, discovered the rotary compressor and a capacitor bank whose tubes “were covered with a multitude of aluminum spikes, like Christmas tree tinsel” —the finned coil banks that Amana and General Electric used in the ’60s—, “and with a heat pump”. Another veteran confirmed those radiators “of aluminum hair” and a window model “taller than wide”.

Amana passed to Goodman in 1997 and today belongs to Daikin; in Spain air conditioning was never sold again under its name. For the collector, an Air Command from the 70s with a spined battery is a first‑order technical rarity.

Two todocoleccion ads, both in Spanish: “Publicidad 1976. Anuncio Amana. Acondicionadores de aire para habitaciones”, from which the 200 and 600 Air Command series derive, the capacities in frigorías, the mention of 50 and 60 cycles (a sign that the same brochure was used for Europe and America) and the signature “Amana Refrigeration, Inc., Iowa 52204, a Raytheon company”, and “Anuncio acondicionador de aire acondicionado Amana 200 600 Air Command, publicidad de los años 70”. Neither includes a Spanish distributor, which fits the testimony that the import was done exclusively by an installer.

That testimony is the September 2009 thread on elaireacondicionado.com (user “guiem mallorca”, with a reply from “ELEUTERIO”), which provides the rooftops from 12,000 frig/h, the 17‑year window unit with rotary compressor and aluminum fin battery, and the heat pump. The description matches the spine‑fin technology that Amana and GE used in the ’60s, which gives plausibility to the memory.

Pending verification

Exact date of the repurchase by Foerstner (c. 1949‑1950), of the sale to Maytag (August 2001 according to one source, 2002 according to another) and of the transition of Amana PTACs to Daikin (one source says 2014).

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