Who invented the blender?

Stephen J. Poplawski (1885 - 1956) was a Polish-American who invented the blender in 1922.

When he was 9, he and his family emigrated to the United States and ended up in Racine, Wisconsin. At the young age of 23, he founded his own company. A year later, the young man was commissioned by the Arnold Electric Company to come up a machine that would automatically mix malted milk drinks for restaurants.

He was the first person to ever come up with the idea of connecting a blade at the bottom of the container to an agitating mechanism so that it could spin, chop, puree, and do all the things that restaurants needed a blender to do.

In 1922 he filed a patent "for the first mixer of my design having an agitating element mounted in a base and adapted to be drivingly connected with the agitator in the cup when the cup was placed in a recess in the top of the base." During the 1920s he filed several patents for such machines and Arnold became a leader in their manufacture. In 1926 that firm was sold to Hamilton Beach Manufacturing Co., and he joined their staff.

In 1933 he began working on his own time to create a blender for home rather than commercial use, ultimately forming Stephens Electric Co., and in 1940 he patented a household mixer for family kitchens. On January 28, 1946, this machine was named the "Osterizer" when Poplawski sold his business to the John Oster Manufacturing Co. He retired in 1946 after this sale, and died in Racine on Dec. 9, 1956.