Invention Of Food Processor

Domestic food processors evolve from simple food mixers to multi-purpose processors. There is no single inventor of the food processor, but the first electric mixers were made by Hobart Manufacturing and the Hamilton Beach Manufacturing Co.

Chester A. Beach (USA) was a pioneer of small, high-speed, low-powered universal electric motors, and made his first "fractional horsepower" motor in 1905. The diminishing size of electric motors enabled them to be used in a number of new appliances, and in 1910 Beach formed the Hamilton Beach Manufacturing Co. with Fred Osius and L.H. Hamilton (both USA) in order to market the first patented electric food mixer. However, two years earlier Herbert Johnson (USA) of Hobart Manufacturing had designed a baker's mixer to take the labour out of kneading dough, and it was this earlier mixer that led the way towards multi-purpose food processors.

Hobart Manufacturing began supplying the US Navy in 1916. The mixer proved so popular that in 1919 the company began producing a domestic version, the Model H-5 Mixer, through a subsidiary called Troy Metal Products. The H-5 was the first domestic mixer with its own fixed stand and bowl, and the first in which the beater and the bowl rotated in opposite directions, a feature known as "planetary action" (a patent for this feature was granted in 1920). The H-5 was soon renamed KitchenAid®, a brand still going strong today. During the 1930s Egmont Arens (USA) designed a smaller, sleeker, lighter version, now acknowledged as a design classic.

In 1922 Stephen J. Poplawski (USA) invented the first "blender" by putting a spinning blade in the bottom of the bowl rather than having beaters/mixers coming into the bowl from above. The next big step came in 1948, when Ken Wood (England) produced a mixer that by 1950 he had developed into the first multi-purpose food processor - a combined mixer, siever, blender, juicer, grinder, liquidizer, mincer, peeler, slicer and shredder known as the Kenwood Chef. The first of the modern, ultra-compact, lightweight domestic food processors was the Magimix®, invented by Pierre Verdun (France) in 1971. It was not a huge success in France, but became very popular in America, where it was known as the Cusinart®.

Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison