Hand Mixer

Creator:

Taplin Manufacturing Co.

Creation Date:

ca. 1920s

Accession Number:

Demonstration Collection

We may call this device an egg beater, but it was used to mix just about anything that needed it. People began to develop hand mixers similar to this model in the 1850s, adapting the basic machinery several times over the next decades. In 1884, Black inventor Willis Johnson patented a rotary mechanism with gears, greatly improving the ease and efficiency of use. The first electric mixer was patented in 1908, but it was intended for commercial use; handheld electric mixers as we know them were not patented until 1961.