Irving Naxon

Irving Naxon (February 26, 1902 – September 22, 1989) was an American inventor, who is most famous for inventing and patenting the slow cooker. Naxon was also the first Jewish engineer who worked for Western Electric. A 1950 advertisement shows a slow cooker called the "Simmer Crock" made by the Industrial Radiant Heat Corp. of Gladstone, NJ. As a young girl, her mother sent her to the bakery on Friday afternoon before the Sabbath with a ceramic pot full of cholent, and she was sent to pick up the dish on Saturday after Sabbath was over. The stew cooked low and slow in the residual heat from the cooling oven, which had not been stoked during the Sabbath according to the traditional prohibition of working during the Sabbath. In 1936, he applied for a patent for the slow cooker. On January 23, 1940, he received that patent.

Death Naxon died on September 22, 1989, in an Evanston nursing home. At the time, he was survived by his wife, three daughters, and five grandchildren (Tamara, Margot, Abigail, Scott and Karen). After his death, a sixth grandchild was born, who in Jewish tradition, was named Ilana after him.