Is This The Most Important Kitchen Invention Ever Made?

My book, The Times You Grew Up With, takes you back: https://paulmcallister.store In 1919, the Hobart Manufacturing Company in Troy, Ohio built a stand mixer for the American home. It weighed sixty-five pounds and cost more than a third of a Ford. No retailer in the country would stock it. So Hobart hired women — hundreds of them — and sent them door to door, demonstrating the machine in strangers’ kitchens. It was the beginning of KitchenAid. This is the story of three threads that built one of the most enduring brands in American manufacturing: Josephine Cochrane, the woman who invented the dishwasher in an Illinois shed and died thirteen years before Hobart ever bought her company. The mostly-female sales force that kept KitchenAid alive when the product was too expensive to sell through stores. And Egmont Arens, the industrial designer who created the 1937 Model K — the silhouette so perfect it’s been trademarked, unchanged for nearly ninety years. Every KitchenAid stand mixer ever made is assembled at one factory in Greenville, Ohio. The plant is still expanding. Sources: Smithsonian Magazine — “For 100 Years, KitchenAid Has Been the Stand-Up Brand of Stand Mixers” (2018) U.S. Patent and Trademark Office — “I’ll Do It Myself”: Josephine Cochrane and the Dishwasher Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum — Egmont Arens Collection and Industrial Design Archive Ohio Cooperative Living — “Ohio Icon: KitchenAid Stand Mixer” Mental Floss — “11 Things You Might Not Know About KitchenAid Mixers” The Daily Advocate (Greenville, OH) — “KitchenAid Cuts Ribbon on Factory Expansion” (2016)