Man Who Invented the Electric Stove and Automatic Toaster Was From Flint, Michigan

Here's a man who hailed from Michigan that most Michiganders don't know about. Among his many accomplishments, this man invented:
The first electric stove
Flexible ice cube trays
Automatic electric toaster

Among the inventions that did not seem to catch on were:
A solution that made chicken taste like beef
A chair that attached to your butt
Cigarettes that put themselves out

The man's name was Lloyd Copeman, from Flint. Born in Lapeer County in December 1881, he attended Michigan Agricultural College, which later became Michigan State University. Lloyd began experimenting and inventing when he was ten years old; his first was “a clock-like instrument that turned his father’s grindstone automatically”.

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After marrying in Washington state, he and his wife came back to Michigan where he began to take his inventing seriously. By 1912, the Copeman Electric Stove Company was formed, thanks to stockholders raising half a million dollars. This is where he invented the first heat-regulated electric stove that he dubbed the “fireless cooker”.

The automatic electric toaster was another creation, toasting bread on both sides...before, the consumer could only toast one side, take the slice out, turn it over, and brown the other side.

In the late 1910s, Westinghouse bought into the Copeman company, and Lloyd ended up inventing his most successful, profitable invention: the flexible, rubber ice cube tray. Lloyd had many other inventions patented, some made, some not, up to approximately 650 patents. He even came up with an early version of a microwave oven.

One thing that he had 'a hand' in creating, but doesn't get mentioned in some of his biographies, is one of America's most famous vocalists. His daughter Ruth married a machinery merchant by the name of Gilbert Ronstadt. Together, they had four children – the third of which grew up to be pop vocalist Linda Ronstadt.....yep, Lloyd's granddaughter.

Lloyd Copeman kept working on new inventions all the way up until he passed away in 1956 at the age of 74. He is buried in Oakwood-Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Oakland County.

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