Disposal history...
The first disposal was invented by John hammes in 1927, It was a horizontal machine. Hammes patented his invention, and spent the next few years playing with the concept. By the mid 1930's he had refined his disposer to what it still is today: a vertical motor machine, a rotating disk with hammers wearing the garbage down as it was tossed around a ring that was jagged.
GE bought license to Hammes' patent and put their first *Disposall* on the market in 1936. For those who watch ebay, there was just one of these units for sale on there a few weeks ago, never used!
GE's first disposal was batch feed. GE would stick to batch feed models only until the late 40's.
Hammes watched GE put their version of his invention on the market, and decided to form his own company to make disposers. In 1938 InSinkErator was born, and their first machine was continuous feed. ISE materials I have read states they sold 50 disposers their first year.
After WWII it was John Hammes who started pushing his disposer to home builders. Up until the late 80's the only way to get an ISE disposer was to either buy a new house that came with one(and you usually got a badger I) or have a plumber install an ISE.
Waste King appeared in 1948 also with a Continuous feed model. They made the concept popular.
During the 50's there were many variations on the disposer, and most major appliance brands had a disposer in their line. Even Eureka Williams, best known for vacuum cleaners, made a garbage disposer,
As time went by, brands came and went. Waste King and GE were the best known brands in the 50's and 60's, with Anaheim-Tappan taking a chunk of their markets in the 1970's. As all this was going on, ISE was quietly prospering through its plumbers-only and new construction sales, and from Sears. About 1966 ISE started making disposals for Sears, and they have yet to stop.
GE stopped making their own disposals in the early 80's, then went back to making them about 1988, only to stop again in 2001.
Waste King changed hands a number of times too, before finally being bought by Anaheim in 1994. In the last year Anaheim has ditched all the brand names that made them famous(Sinkmaster and Whirlaway) and focused mainly on the Waste King name.
ISE went retail in the late 80's, and today they own 80% of the disposal market.
I think a paper shredder type disposer would be cool, but maybe too good. You drop a dish cloth or a spoon into one of those and its gone! At least one of today's disposers won't do too much damage to either!
Click the link below to see the 1938 GE Disposall that was listed on ebay...its upside down in the picture.
