The blender didn't work.īut Waring was intrigued by the device. He took a sample to Waring's dressing room and clicked the 'On' switch. Poplawski's design eventually would become the Osterizer, made for years in Wisconsin.īut meanwhile, Osius kept working on his own blender model until he felt it was ready to be marketed. He was the first, and as soon as people tasted malted milk shakes and soda fountain jerks discovered what happened when you threw some strawberries in the mix, you had a winning device,' says Thomas Fehring, a Milwaukee engineer and vice chair of the ASME history and heritage committee. 'Poplawski affixes the motor to a cup with blades and he finds he can liquefy products, and he starts selling the blenders to drugstores to make malted milks. His version of the electric blender had a specific purpose, according to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, which chronicles mechanical milestones. The blender had been invented already in 1922 by another Racine engineer, Stephen J. That motor would become the mini-powerhouse for everything from electric fans to sewing machines, and, yes, for a little device called the blender. Osius and engineer Chester Beach were among the Wisconsin entrepreneurs exploring uses for a new invention: the fractional horsepower electric motor. The small town inventor who came backstage after Waring's radio show that night was Frederick Osius of Racine. He also had an ulcer and was always on the lookout for new ways to prepare the vegetables needed for his diet. Waring not only loved music, he'd studied engineering and was known in inventor circles. Its celebrity goes back to 1936 when a small-town inventor made his way into the dressing room of music star Fred Waring, leader of the chart-topping orchestra Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians. The Waring blender brand story has been high-profile show biz from the start. Think of the blender the next time you hear the lyrics to Warren Zevon's 1976 classic: 'Poor, Poor Pitiful Me.'('She put me through some changes, Lord/Sort of like a Waring blender.') Or when you chuckle at the memory of Dan Aykroyd's classic 'Super Bassomatic' skit from 'Saturday Night Live.' Or when you take your child to the doctor for a polio vaccine.Īnd you can thank Wisconsin inventors for starting it all. And this year perhaps the best-known blender of all, the Waring, marks 75 years of puréeing, slicing and making history. It is the blender, the seemingly humble liquefier that spends most of its time awaiting call-up on the kitchen counter. Not many kitchen appliances get their names in rock songs and help save millions of lives around the world to boot.