Frigidaire is the American consumer and commercial home appliances brand subsidiary of European parent company Electrolux. Frigidaire was founded as the Guardian Frigerator Company in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and developed the first self-contained refrigerator (invented by Nathaniel B. Wales and Alfred Mellowes) in 1916. In 1918, William C. Durant, a founder of General Motors, personally invested in the company and in 1919, it adopted the name Frigidaire. The brand was so well known in the refrigeration field in the early-to-mid-1900s that many Americans called any refrigerator (of whatever brand) a Frigidaire. The name Frigidaire or its antecedent Frigerator may be the origin of the widely used English word fridge, although more likely simply an abbreviation of refrigerator which is a word kn