Crock-Pot

A slow cooker or Crock-Pot is a countertop electrical cooking appliance that maintains a relatively low temperature (compared to other cooking methods like baking, boiling, and frying) for many hours, allowing unattended cooking of pot roast, stew, and other suitable dishes.
The Naxon Utilities Corporation of Chicago developed the Naxon Beanery All-PurposeCooker. The Rival Company bought Naxon in 1970, and reintroduced it under the Crock-Pot name in 1971. In 1974, Rival introduced removable stoneware inserts. The brand now belongs to Sunbeam Products, a subsidiary of Jarden Corporation. While Crock-Pot still dominates the market in the USA, Hamilton Beach, West Bend Housewares and other companies have also introduced similar slow cookers.

A slow cooker consists of a lidded round or oval cooking pot made of glazed ceramic or porcelain, surrounded by a housing, usually metal, containing a thermostatically controlled electric heating element. The lid is often transparent glass and is seated in a groove in the pot edge; condensed vapour collects in that groove and provides a low-pressure seal to the atmosphere. Pressure inside a working crock pot is therefore effectively at atmospheric pressure, despite the water vapor generated inside the pot. A crock pot therefore is substantially different from a pressure cooker and presents no danger of an abrupt (perhaps explosive) pressure release.

The ceramic pot, or a 'crock', acts as both a cooking container and a heat reservoir. Many slow cookers have two or more temperature settings (e.g., low, medium, high, and sometimes a "keep warm" setting). A typical slow cooker is designed to heat food to 170°F (77°C) on low, to perhaps 190-200°F (88-93°C) on high.
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Corelle

Corelle is a brand of glassware and diswasher.It is made of Vitrelle, a laminated tempered glass product with three layers of two types of glass. The thermally bonded layers give Corelle its strength, allowing it to be much thinner than other dinnerware. Introduced by Corning Glass Works in 1970, it is now manufactured and sold by World Kitchen. Corelle is chemical resistant, durable, and lightweight: A typical Corelle dinner plate measuring 26 centimeters across weighs 355 grams.
Sudden temperature changes and other damages have been shown to cause serious structural harm, raising the risk of shattering at a later time.
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Dyson Company

Dyson is an appliances manufacturer. Its main products are vacuum cleaners that use cylonic separation. The founder, James Dyson, used centrifugal particle separation after finding that to restore suction, the dust bag in his vacuum cleaner needed to be replaced – even when it was not full.

In 1979, James Dyson bought what was then the top of the range vacuum cleaner. He became frustrated with how it rapidly clogged and began to lose suction so he emptied the bag to try to restore suction but this had no effect. Dyson opened the bag and noticed a layer of dust inside, clogging the fine material mesh. He resolved to develop a better vacuum cleaner that worked more efficiently.

During a visit to a local sawmill, Dyson noticed how the sawdust was removed from the air by large industrial cyclones. He conjectured the same principle might work, on a smaller scale, in a vacuum cleaner. He dismantled his machine and fitted it with a cardboard cyclone. On cleaning the room with it, he found it picked up more than his bag machine. This was the world’s first vacuum cleaner without a bag.

According to The Journal of Business and Design (vol. 8, no. 1), the source of inspiration was in the following form:

In his usual style of seeking solutions from unexpected sources, Dyson thought of how a nearby sawmill used a cyclone—a 30-foot (9.1 m)-high cone that spun dust out of the air by centrifugal force—to expel waste. He reasoned that a vacuum cleaner that could separate dust by cyclonic action and spin it out of the airstream would eliminate the need for both bag and filter.

Dyson developed 5,127 Dual Cyclone prototype designs between 1979 and 1984. The first prototype vacuum cleaner, the G-Force, was built in 1983, and appeared on the front cover of Design Magazine the same year. In 1986, a production version of the G-Force was first sold in Japan for the equivalent of £2,000.

In 1991, it won the International Design Fair prize in Japan, and became a status symbol there.

Using the income from the Japanese licence, James Dyson set up the Dyson company, opening a research centre and factory in Wiltshire, England, in June 1993. His first production version of a dual cyclone vacuum cleaner featuring constant suction was the DC01, sold for £200. In their research for the vacuum cleaner, when Dyson asked people whether they would be happy with a transparent container for the dust, most respondents said no. Dyson and his team decided to make a transparent container anyway.

In 1999, US company Hoover was found guilty of patent infringement and later admitted that it did consider buying the patent from James Dyson, but only to keep the technology out of the market.

After the introduction of the DC02, DC02 Absolute, DC02 De Stijl, DC05, DC04, DC06 and DC04 Zorbster, the root Cyclone was introduced in April 2001 as the Dyson DC07, which uses seven smaller funnels on top of the vacuum.

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Dualit Limited

Dualit is a British manufacturer of kitchen and catering equipment, best known for their range of heavy-duty toaster. The Dualit toaster is regarded as a design classic, thanks in part to its retro styling. It differs from most other toasters in that it is relatively simple in construction, with an electromechanical timer and using a manual lever mechanism to lift the toast from the toasting slots. It is also easily repairable, with replacement elements and other parts available, so it typically has a longer service life than contemporary electronic toasters. Although it was primarily designed for the commercial catering market, its classic appearance has led to its becoming trendy in the domestic market, described by The Observer as a "symbol of the kitchen porn 90s"

Designed by inventor Max Gort-Barten in the early 1950s, the Dualit toaster is notable for its 'large loaf' shape, characterised with cooling slots at both ends of the unit. These are necessary for the periods of extended use, expected of the toaster in the busy environment of the commercial café or canteen. The units are available in different sizes, with various slot numbers and are manufactured in a range of colours. The simple hand-built process used in their manufacture, with each part held together with visible screws, makes the toaster robust, yet easy to disassemble and repair. Another distinguishing feature of these machines is the electromechanical timer which makes a loud whirring noise when in use.

Dualit have manufactured a diverse range of kitchenware products in recent years, including smaller domestic toasters, kettles, mechanical scales and digital radios.

The iconic status of the Dualit toaster has let to it being widely imitated and in some cases these copies have been subject to legal action from Dualit.
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Coleman Company

Coleman Company, Inc. is an American company that specializes in outdoor recreation products. Historically, Coleman is known for camping gear.
It was founded by W. C. Coleman, who began selling lamps in 1900 in Kingfisher, Oklahoma and moved to Wichita, Kansas in 1902.
The Coleman Company's headquarters are in Wichita, and it also has facilities in Texas. There are approximately 1500 employees.
Throughout its history, Coleman has produced a wide variety of equipment primarily aimed at the camping and recreational markets. Perhaps their most famous product is the Coleman Lantern, a series of lamps that burn kerosene, naphtha, gasoline, or propane and use one or two mantles to produce an intense white light. Coleman also manufactures camp stoves, sleeping bags, coolers, hot tubs, generators, watches, tents, and backpacks among other things. They also make a line of small boats, including canoes, pontoon boats, johnboats and the unique scanoe. In the past they also sold pop-up travel trailers, Skiroule snowmobiles and the Hobie Cat brand of sailboats.
A separate business unit sells home heating and air conditioning units.

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Braun

Braun GmbH (German pronunciation "brown", commonly pronounced "brawn" in English) is a German consumer products company in Kronberg im Taunus. There is also a factory situated in Carlow, Ireland.

From 1984 through 2005, Braun was a wholly owned subsidiary of The Gillette Company, which had purchased a controlling interest in the company in 1967. Braun is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Procter & Gamble, which acquired Gillette in 2005.

Formerly a manufacturer of radios, slide projectors, Super 8 film cameras and accessories, and high-fidelity sound systems.

Braun no longer provides replacement parts for their Multipractic Food processor, one of their most popular items. Braun's clocks are increasingly difficult to find in the marketplace.

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Whirlpool Corporation

Whirlpool Corporation is a Fortune 500 company and a global manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances, with annual sales of approximately $20 billion, more than 70,000 employees, and more than 70 manufacturing and technology research centers around the world. The company markets Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Amana, Gladiator Garage Works, Inglis, Estate, Brastemp, Bauknecht, Consul, and other major brand names to consumers in nearly every country around the world.

After acquiring the Maytag Corporation on March 31, 2006, Whirlpool Corporation became "the largest home appliance maker in the world", prior to which Electrolux was the largest home appliance maker in the world.

Whirlpool's global and North American headquarters are in Benton Harbor, Michigan. In the U.S., Whirlpool has manufacturing facilities in Fort Smith, Arkansas; Evansville, Indiana; Iowa (Newton and Amana); Tulsa, Oklahoma; Ohio (Clyde, Findlay, Greenville and Marion); and Cleveland, Tennessee.

Whirlpool Corporation has seven employee run diversity networks that are involved with business, employee, and community projects to address the needs of the groups they represent. These diversity networks are The Women's Network (TWN), the Native American Network (NAN), the Whirlpool African American Network (WAAN), The Pride Network (PRIDE), the Whirlpool Asian Community (WAC), the Whirlpool Hispanic Network (WHN), and the Young Professionals Network (YP).

Whirlpool received a 100% rating on the Corporate Equality Index released by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equal rights organization Human Rights Campaign starting in 2004, the third year of the report.

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Salton-Westinghouse

Salton, Inc. is a United States company based in Florida that manufactures home appliances, notably the George Foreman series (since 1994) of contact grills and related devices. Salton also manufactures the Juiceman and Breadman series of home appliances and owns the divisions Maxim and Toastmaster.
Its headquarters are in Miramar, Florida. The company was founded in 1947 by Lou Salton, a Jewish immigrant from Poland.
In 2001, General Time Corporation, parent company of Westclox, a clock manufacturer, went bankrupt, and sold the Westclox trademarks to Salton.
Salton was licensed to make small appliances such as vacuum cleaners under the Westinghouse name, from 2002 to 2008.
On 6 August 2007, Salton was suspended from the NYSE. It was subsequently listed on the OTC Bulletin Board, changing its symbol from SFP to SFPI.
In October 2007, Salton sold its entire time products business, including the Westclox and Ingraham trademarks, to NYL Holdings LLC

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Tupperware

Tupperware is the name of a home products line that includes preparation, storage, and serving products for the kitchen and home, which were first introduced to the public in 1946.
Tupperware develops, manufactures, and internationally distributes its products by its parent company Tupperware Brands Corporation and it is marketed by means of direct sales through an independent sales force of approximately 1.9 million consultants. Tupperware is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tupperware Brands Corporation.

Tupperware was developed in 1946 by Earl Silas Tupper (1907-1983) in the U.S.A. He developed plastic containers used in households to contain food and keep it airtight. The formerly patented "burping seal" is a famous aspect of Tupperware, which distinguished it from competitors.

Tupperware pioneered the direct marketing strategy made famous by the Tupperware party. Brownie Wise (1913-1992), a former sales representative of Stanley Home Products, developed the strategy. During the early 1950s, Tupperware's sales and popularity exploded, thanks in large part to Wise's influence among women who sold Tupperware, and some of the famous "jubilees" celebrating the success of Tupperware ladies at lavish and outlandishly themed parties. Tupperware was known—at a time when women came back from working during World War II only to be told to "go back to the kitchen" -- as a method of empowering women, and giving them a toehold in the post-war business world. The tradition of Tupperware's "Jubilee" style events continues to this day, with rallies being held in major cities to recognize and reward top-selling and top-recruiting individuals, teams, and organizations.

In 1958, Earl Tupper fired Brownie Wise over general difference of opinion in the Tupperware business operation. It is believed that Tupper objected to the expenses incurred by the jubilee and other similar celebrations of Tupperware.

Tupperware spread to Europe in 1960 when Mila Pond hosted a Tupperware party in Weybridge, England, and subsequently around the world. In 2003, Tupperware closed down operations in the UK, citing customer dissatisfaction with their direct sales model as an issue , and relaunched after a restructuring in 2005.

Rexall bought Tupperware in 1958. Rexall sold its namesake drugstores in 1977, and renamed itself Dart Industries. Dart merged with Kraftco to form Dart & Kraft. The company demerged, with the former Dart assets named Premark International. Tupperware Brands was spun off from Premark in 1996; Premark was acquired by Illinois Tool Works three years later.

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Sanyo

SANYO Electric Co., Ltd. is a major electronics company and member of the Fortune 500, whose headquarters is located in Moriguchi, Osaka, Japan. Sanyo targets the middle of the market and has over 324 offices and plants worldwide, together employing more than 11,000 employees. On November 2, 2008, Sanyo and Panasonic announced that they have agreed on the main points of a proposed buyout that would make Sanyo a subsidiary of Panasonic and a formal announcement of the acquisition was made on Sanyo's web site on December 19, 2008.^[3]They became a subsidiary of Panasonic on December 21, 2009.

Sanyo utilizes an extensive socialization process for new employees, so that they will be acclimatized to Sanyo's corporate culture. New employees take a five-month course during which they eat together and share company-provided sleeping accommodation. They learn everything from basic job requirements to company expectations for personal grooming and the appropriate way in which to address their coworkers and superiors.
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Samsung

The Samsung Group is a multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It is the world's largest conglomerate by revenue with an annual revenue of US$173.4 billion in 2008 and is South Korea's largest chaebol. The meaning of the Korean hanja word Samsung is "tristar" or "three stars".

The Samsung Group is composed of numerous international affiliated business, most of them united under the Samsung brand including Samsung Electronics, the world's largest electrocnics company, Samsung Heavy Industries, the world's second largest shipbuilder and Samsung C&T, a major global construction company. Samsung has been the world's most popular consumer electronics brand since 2005 and is the best known South Korean brand in the world. Samsung Group accounts for more than 20% of South Korea's total exports and is the leader in many domestic industries, such as the financial, chemical, retail and entertainment industries. The company's strong influence in South Korea is visible throughout the nation, which has been referred to as the "Republic of Samsung"

Samsung Group accounts for more than 20% of South Korea's total exports^[10] and in many domestic industries, Samsung Group is the sole monopoly dominating a single market, its revenue as large as some countries' total GDP. In 2006, Samsung Group would have been the 34th largest economy in the world if ranked, larger than that of Argentina. The company has a powerful influence on the country's economic development, politics, media and culture, being a major driving force behind the Miracle on the Han River; many businesses today use its international success as a role model. Click here for some Samsung products.

Pyrex

Pyrex is a brand name for glassware, introduced by Corning Incorporated in 1915. Originally, Pyrex was made from thermal shock resistant borosilicate glass. In 1998, Corning sold its consumer products division which subsequently adopted the name World Kitchen. Pyrex kitchen glassware manufactured and licensed for sale in the United States is now made of tempered soda lime glass at the World Kitchen facility in Charleroi, Pennsylvania. Pyrex products for the European Union continue to be made of borosilicate glass in France. Pyrex laboratory glassware is also still made of borosilicate glass.

According to Carroll Gantz, Dr. Jesse Littleton of Corning discovered the cooking potential of borosilicate glass by presenting his wife with a makeshift casserole dish made from a cut down Nonex (a low expansion glass developed in 1908 by Dr. Eugene Sullivan) battery jar. Corning went on to remove lead from the formula, and Pyrex was born.

Though borosilicates had been produced before the Pyrex brand, the name Pyrex is widely used as a genericized trademark for the material. The brand in Europe, the Middle East and Africa is currently owned by ARC International who acquired the European business in early 2006 from Newell Rubbermaid who in turn had acquired it from Corning in the 1990s.

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Pioneer

Pioneer Corporation is a multinational corporation that specializes in digital entertainment products, based in Tokyo, Japan. The company was founded in 1938 in Tokyo as a radio and speaker repair shop. Today, Pioneer is well-known for technology advancements in the consumer electronics industry.

Pioneer played a role in the development of interactive cable TV, the Laser Disc player, the first automotive Compact Disc player, the first detachable face car stereo, Supertuner technology, DVD and DVD recording, plasma display, and Organic LED display (OLED). The company works with optical disc and display technology and software products and is also a manufacturer. Sharp Corporation took a 14% stake in Pioneer in 2007.

On February 12, 2009, Pioneer announced it plans to cease manufacture of television sets by March 2010. On June 25, 2009, Sharp Corporation agreed to form a joint venture on their optical business to be called "Pioneer Digital Design and Manufacturing Corporation".

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Panasonic

Panasonic Corporation, is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Japan. Its main business is in electronics manufacturing and it produces products under a variety of names including Panasonic and Technics.
Since its founding in 1918, it grew to become the largest Japanese electronics producer. In addition to electronics, Panasonic offers non-electronic products and services such as home renovation services. Panasonic was ranked the 89th-largest company in the world in 2009 by the Forbes Global 2000 and is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders.

In 1927, the company founder adopted a brand name "National"for a new lamp product, knowing "national" meant "of or relating to a people, a nation." In 1955, the company labeled its export audio speakers and lamps "PanaSonic", which was the first time it used its "Panasonic" brand name.

In May 2003, the company put "Panasonic" as its global brand, and set its global brand slogan, "Panasonic ideas for life." The company began to unify its brands to "Panasonic" and, by March 2004 replaced "National" for products and outdoor signboards, except for those in Japan.
On January 10, 2008, the company announced that it would change its name to "Panasonic Corporation" (effective on October 1, 2008) and unify "National" in Japan to its global brand "Panasonic" (by March 2010). The name change was approved at a shareholders' meeting on June 26, 2008.

Panasonic was founded in 1918 by Konosuke Matsushita first selling duplex lamp sockets.
In 1961, Konosuke Matsushita traveled to the United States and met with American dealers. Panasonic began producing television sets for the U.S. market under the Panasonic brand name, and expanded the use of the brand to Europe in 1979.

The company used the National trademark outside of North America during the 1950s through the 1970s. It sold televisions, radios, and home appliances in some markets. The company began opening manufacturing plants around the world. It quickly developed a reputation for well-made reliable products.

The company debuted a hi-fidelity audio speaker in Japan in 1965 with the brand Technics. This line of high quality stereo components became worldwide favorites. The most famous product still made today is the SL-1200 record player, known for its high performance, precision, and durability. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Panasonic continued to produce high-quality specialized electronics for niche markets, such as short-wave radios, and developed a successful line of stereo receivers, CD players, and other components

In November 1999, the Japan Times reported that Panasonic planned to develop a "next generation first aid kit" called the Electronic Health Checker. At the time, the target market was said to be elderly people, especially those living in rural areas where medical help might not be immediately available, so it was planned that the kit would include support for telemedicine. The kits were then in the testing stage, with plans for eventual overseas distribution, to include the United States.

In recent years the company has been involved with the development of high-density optical disc standards intended to eventually replace the DVD and the SD memory card.
On January 19, 2006 Panasonic announced that, starting in February, it will stop producing analog televisions (then 30% of its total TV business) to concentrate on digital TVs.

On November 3, 2008 Panasonic and Sanyo were in talks, resulting in the eventual acquisition of Sanyo. The merger is to be completed by September 2009, and will result in one mega-corporation with revenues over ¥11.2 trillion (around $110 billion). As part of what will be Japan's biggest electronics company, the Sanyo brand and most of the employees will be retained as a subsidiary

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Sunbeam

Sunbeam Products is an American brand that has produced electric home appliances since 1910. Their products have included the Mixmaster mixer, the Sunbeam CG waffle iron, Coffeemaster (1938–1964) and the fully-automatic T20 toaster

Sunbeam bought out the Rain King Sprinkler Company and produced one of the most popular sprinkler lines of the 1950s and 1960s. Meanwhile, Sunbeam continued to expand outside of Chicago. By the end of the 1970s, as the leading American manufacturer of small appliances, Sunbeam enjoyed about $1.3 billion in annual sales and employed nearly 30,000 people worldwide. In 1981, after Sunbeam was bought by Allegheny International Inc. of Pittsburgh, its Chicago-area factories were closed and the headquarters moved from the Chicago region

Sunbeam went into decline through the 1990s and professional downsizer Albert J. Dunlap was recruited to turn the company around in 1996. In 1996 and 1997, Sunbeam reported massive increases in sales for its various backyard and kitchen items, but the sudden surge in demand for barbecues didn't hold up under scrutiny. An internal investigation revealed that Sunbeam was actually in severe crisis, and that Dunlap had encouraged violations of accepted accounting rules. Dunlap was fired, and under CEO Jerry W. Levin the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2001

Soon after Sunbeam filed for bankruptcy, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Dunlap and four other Sunbeam executives, alleging that they had engineered a massive accounting fraud. The SEC said $60 million of Sunbeam's supposed record $189 million earnings for 1997 were the result of fraudulent accounting. It also said that Dunlap had falsely created the impression of massive losses in 1996 to make it look like Sunbeam had made a dramatic turnaround the next year. Along with Dunlap and several other officers, the SEC also sued Phillip Harlow, at Sunbeam's accounting firm, Arthur Andersen. Dunlap was ultimately banned from ever serving as an officer or director of a public company again.

In 2002, Sunbeam emerged from bankruptcy as American Household, Inc. (AHI), a privately-held company. Its former household products division became the subsidiary Sunbeam Products, Inc.
AHI was purchased in September 2004 by the Jarden Corporation, of which it is now a subsidiary.

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Mr. Coffee

Mr. Coffee is an automatic-drip kitchen coffee machine that was popular in the 1970s and 1980s. Its advertising spokesman was former baseball player Joe DiMaggio. The device was invented by Edward Able.

Introduced in 1972, Mr. Coffee was the first drip coffee maker made available for home use. Prior to the introduction of Mr. Coffee, most coffee prepared at home was made by a percolator, either on a stovetop or plugged directly into a wall socket. Percolators allowed brewed coffee to come into direct contact with heat, resulting in an inferior, burned beverage.

In 1995, a variation was produced by the same company for tea called "Mrs. Tea". The machine differed from Mr. Coffee only in detail as the drip process works equally well for tea as for coffee, although the result is often a darker, samovar type of tea.

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Maytag

Maytag Corporation was a $4.7 billion home and commercial appliance company, headquartered in Newton, Iowa from 1893 to 2006, and now part of the Whirpool Corporation.
The Maytag Washing Machine Company was founded in 1893 by businessman Frederick Maytag. In 1925, the Maytag Washing Machine Company became Maytag, Inc. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the company was one of the few to actually make a profit in successive years. At his father's death in 1940, Fred Maytag II, grandson of the founder, took over the presidency. During World War II, the company participated in war production by making special components for military equipment. In 1946, production of washing machines was resumed; in 1949, the first automatic washers were produced in a new purpose-built plant. In 1946, Maytag began marketing a separate line of ranges and refrigerators made by other companies under the Maytag name. During the Korean War, the company again produced parts for military equipment, although washing-machine production continued. During the 1950s, the 'white goods,' or laundry appliance industry grew rapidly. Maytag first entered the commercial laundry field at this time, manufacturing washers and dryers for commercial self-service laundries and commercial operators. In response, other full-line appliance producers began to compete with Maytag in the white-goods consumer market. These included 'full-line' manufacturers such as General Electric, Whirlpool, and Frigidaire, who built not only washing machines and dryers, but also refrigerators, stoves, and other appliances. Since Maytag was much smaller than the full-line producers, the company decided to limit itself to the manufacture of washers and dryers, alongside ovens and refrigerators built by other companies, as a niche-market, premium-brand manufacturer. The company capitalized on its reputation by renaming its corporate address in Newton, Iowa, "One Dependability Square."

By 1960, Maytag had ceased marketing ovens and refrigerators, but later began once again to expand into kitchen appliances with its own design of portable kitchen dishwasher and a line of food-waste disposers. Upon the death of Fred Maytag II, the last family member involved in the company's management, E. G. Higdon was named president of the company, with George M. Umbreit becoming chairman and CEO. By the late 1970s, over 70 percent of U.S. households were equipped with washers and dryers, and with approximately 18,000 employees worldwide, the company was established as a dominant manufacturer of large laundry appliances. After the company's acquisition of Magic Chef, Inc., in 1986, a move which nearly doubled its size, the company acquired a new corporate name, the Maytag Corporation.

On April 1, 2006, the Whirpool Corp. completed its acquisition of Maytag Corporation. In May 2006, Whirlpool announced plans to close the former Maytag headquarters office in Newton, as well as laundry manufacturing plants in Newton, Iowa; Herrin, Illinois; and Searcy, Arkansas, by 2007. Following the Maytag closure, all administration will be in Whirlpool's headquarters in Benton Harbor, Michigan. The Maytag name will still be used on rebranded Whirlpool appliances. Most Maytag employees were terminated, and some were offered jobs in Benton Harbor. The board of directors of Maytag all received five years' severance pay. Former chairman and CEO, Ralph F. Hake, received two years' base salary and two years' target bonus under his severance agreement.

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