Draft:Samual Nathan Reigenstrief: "The Dishwasher King"

Samuel Nathan Regenstrief (1910-1988), known as the Dishwasher King, was an Indiana entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Sam Regenstrief immigrated from Austria to the United States as a child. He grew up in Indianapolis, where he was a newsy who ran his own newspaper stand on Monument Circle in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, as a child.

Sam was invited to Connersville, Indiana, to help save Rex Mfg. Company, which was facing financial difficulties at the time; but Rex could not afford to pay Sam, so he was offered company stock and a place to live and living expenses in stead of pay. When he turned Rex's fortunes around, using his time-study expertise, his stocks in the company made him a multi-millionaire.

He later became the driving force behind Design & Manufacturing (D&M) Corporation in Connersville, Indiana, which perfected and patented the modern-day front-loading dishwasher, selling them wholesale to about 14 major retailers, incuding Sears.

Sam Regenstrief also ended up owning several other factories in the area, including a second D&M factory and Absocold, both in Richmond, Indiana, and Wallace Expanding Machines, in Indianapolis. Before founding D&M he was a corperate vice-president at Philco, after Philco purchased Rex Mfg. Co., and made Sam President of that sub-divison.

During it's hayday, D&M manufactured and assembled all the components that made up their dishwashers, to make over 40% of all dishwashers, which earned Sam the title of the Dishwasher King3.

Sam's Philanthropic endeavor, The Regenstrief Institute was Sam's brain child, which helped originate many modernizing changes to health care: Sam, who was becoming well known for his time-study abilities, had been left alone on a gurney in pain, waiting for medical treatment at an over-crowded Indianapolis medical clinic. That made Sam decide that the way healthcare was offered at that time was in need of an major overhaul. He's famously quoted as saying, "I can go anywhere in the world to get health care…but these people have no choice. Surely to God there is something we can do about this!"1.

After his medical incident, Sam and his wife, Myrtie, sought to use time-study techniques and technological advances to improve the medicine was offered. They established the Regenstrief Foundation, which led to the creation of the Regenstrief Institute, a living medical laboratory, at Wishard Hospital (now Eskenazi Health), which sought to make better and more efficient healthcare available to all patients, by removing such inefficiencies as he had encountered.13.

Sam's institute supports researchers and clinicians who modernized and continue to improve medical care, just as he envisioned—safer, more efficient, and accessible for everyone. It even created the position of Nurse Practitioner, created satellite clinics in outlying rural area that didn't have access to good medical care and modernized medical record keeping. It pioneered the general practitioner's use of blood analysis to help diagnose illnesses, so they could be referred to specialists when needed.

1 regenstrief.org

2   http://www.midnightfreemasons.org/2013/02/the-dishwasher-king.html

3  RI Book Chap 1 - (regenstrief.org)  (“REGENSTRIEF: LEGACY OF THE DISHWASHER KING” downloadable pdg)