Expressed during the Inter-national Heating and Ventilating Exposition, Richard F. Roper, president of Pleasantaire Corp., a maker of room air conditioners, said that they should be called room coolers, not air conditioners. One reason he gave was “Air conditioning is a system; a room cooler is an appliance. In the public mind air conditioning is all entwined in a series of ducts and pipes and gigantic chambers and big machinery. And expense — high first cost coupled with substantial operation and maintenance charges.” A room cooler, on the other hand, can be moved and plugged in almost anywhere in the house with little effort or cost Roper pointed out.
This was an unusual stance for a room air conditioning manufacturer to take. Typically, at that time it was the air conditioning system manufacturers who decried calling room air conditioners such, because those were limited-function products that didn’t condition the air.