Alfred Melvin Moen

Alfred M Moen

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_M._Moen
• https://www.moen.com/about-moen/the-moen-story
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14447123/alfred_m_moen

Moen was an American inventor and founder of Moen, Inc. He invented the single-handed mixing faucet. In 1959 Fortune Magazine listed the Moen "one-handle mixing faucet," along with inventions such as Henry Ford's Model T and Benjamin Franklin's Franklin stove, as one of the top 100 best-designed mass-produced products, the result of a survey among the world's leading designers, architects and design teachers conducted by industrial designer Jay Doblin.

He wan an inventor. A tool designer by trade, he first conceived this innovative plumbing fixture in 1937, after burning his hands with hot water by turning on the wrong faucet. Following World War II service in the US Navy, he introduced his design in 1947 and got a manufacturer interested in it, selling 250 faucets to a San Francisco plumbing company. The Moen faucet is now a household name but he never owned the company that bears it. Preferring to stay behind the scenes, he spent the rest of his life in research and design, improving his invention. When asked, towards the end of his life, if he was disappointed at not being elected into the Inventors Hall of Fame, he replied, "No, I didn't invent anything great. I didn't invent penicillin" - just a faucet with a single handle.