Before Mr. Coffee, the American morning cup came from the percolator, a device that boiled brewed coffee back over the grounds again and again until it tasted burnt and bitter. In Cleveland, Ohio, business partners Vincent Marotta and Samuel Glazer ran North American Systems, a coffee delivery company serving offices, and saw that home kitchens had no equivalent of the commercial drip brewer. They hired two former Westinghouse engineers, Edmund Abel and Edwin Schultz, who separated the cold water reservoir from the grounds and used a thermosiphon, the same physics as a geyser, to push heated water up a tube and drip it once through the basket. The machine reached homes in 1972.

To win over wary buyers, the company signed Yankees legend Joe DiMaggio as spokesman in 1973 and brought in coffee connoisseur Dave Kovac for taste credibility. By April 1974 more than one million units had sold. The 1990s brought juicers, bread makers, a tea maker called Mrs. Tea, and the Potato Perfect, and spin-off appliances made up about a third of $174 million in sales by 1995. After a 1980s leveraged buyout the brand passed through Health o meter, Signature Brands, Sunbeam, Jarden, and finally Newell. In 2012 a steam buildup flaw forced a recall of more than 600,000 single cup brewers.

• Percolators recirculated coffee at a rolling boil, far above the roughly 195 to 205 degree Fahrenheit extraction range, pulling out harsh tannins.
• Abel and Schultz’s design kept brewed coffee on a gentle warming plate, never touching the heating element.
• The 2012 single cup recall followed 164 reports of units bursting open, with 61 injuries including facial and hand burns.
• The Mr. Fusion reactor in Back to the Future Part II parodies the Mr. Coffee shape but was built from a Krups coffee grinder.
• Recent models include a smart coffee maker that can be scheduled to grind and brew from a phone app.