Samuel Glazer

Samuel Lewis Glazer (February 24, 1923 – March 21, 2012) was an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. Glazer founded North American Systems with his business partner, Vincent Marotta Sr. and the two also co-developed Mr. Coffee, one of the first automatic drip coffee makers to be introduced to the American consumer market. Through their firm, Glazer and Marotta hired the engineers, Edmund Abel and Erwin Schulze of Westinghouse, whose research produced the first Mr. Coffee machines.

Introduced in 1972, Mr. Coffee proved wildly popular with consumers and revolutionized the way Americans made and consumed coffee in their homes. By 1975, just three years after its introduction, Mr. Coffee was the top selling coffee maker in the United States. The industry trade publication Home Furnishings News listed Mr. Coffee as one of the most important household consumer products introduced in the previous seventy-five years in a list published in 2002.