, established on 15 January 1921, is a Japanese multinational electronics and electrical equipment manufacturing company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the core companies of Mitsubishi. The products from MELCO include elevators and escalators, high-end home appliances, air conditioning, factory automation systems, train systems, electric motors, pumps, semiconductors, digital signage, and satellites. In the United States, products are manufactured and sold by Mitsubishi Electric United States headquartered in Cypress, California. History MELCO was established as a spin-off from the Mitsubishi Group's other core company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, then Mitsubishi Shipbuilding, as the latter divested a marine electric motor factory in Kobe, Nagasaki. It has since diversified to become the major electronics company. MELCO held the record for the fastest elevator in the world, in the 70-story Yokohama Landmark Tower, from 1993 to 2005. The company acquired Nihon Kentetsu, a Japanese home appliance manufacturer, in 2005. In 2015 the company acquired DeLclima, an Italian company that designs and produces HVAC and HPAC units, renamed Mitsubishi Electric Hydronics & IT Cooling Systems SpA in 2017. In early 2020, MELCO was identified as a victim of the year-long cyberattacks perpetrated by the Chinese hackers. Products MELCO is consistently innovative. In 2021, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)’s annual World Intellectual Property Indicators report ranked Mitsubishi Electric's number of patent applications published under the PCT System as 3rd in the world, with 2,661 patent applications being published during 2020. This position is down from their previous ranking as 2nd in 2019 with 2,334 applications. Some product lines of MELCO, such as air conditioners, overlap with the products from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries partly because the companies share the same root. Air conditioning systems Room air conditioners (marketed as Mitsubishi Mr. Slim Room Air Conditioner and Mitsubishi Kirigamine) Package air conditioners (Marketed as Mitsubishi Mr. Slim Packaged Air Conditioner) Variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems (marketed as Mitsubishi CITY MULTI) EcoCute (marketed as Ecodan or DIAHOT) Ventilators Air curtains Air conducting fan Home appliances Refrigerators and freezers Air purifiers, dehumidifiers Vacuum cleaners, electric fans Toasters Building systems Elevators, escalators Moving walks High-speed hand dryers (marketed as Mitsubishi Jet Towel) Information and communications systems Data transmission system solutions SCOPO, the world's first transmission at 10 Gbit/s between relay equipment boards set at a distance of apart Saffron Type System, an anti-aliased text-rendering engine, developed by Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) Optical access systems Satellite communications