1951 – present
Bosch introduced the Universal series of mixers in 1951. The original bowl was a 6-quart, dough-only enamel-on-steel bowl with a bottom-mounted dough hook. The rated dough capacity of this bowl is 14 pounds. This bowl used a three-pin metal splash-ring that fit down over the outside of the bowl.
I have a German Bosch Universal manual from 1961 that shows this bowl on a Universal Model 1, and so can suggest that it had at least a 10-year production run.
Generation 2
The second in the “Original Bowl” series is a stainless steel version of the enameled bowl. It still had three splash-ring locking pins on the exterior of the bowl, but they had moved on to a plastic splash-ring that was interchangeable with their plastic bowl.
Generation 3 – the MUZ6ER1
The third generation of the original-style Bosch Universal bowl made only minor changes. The splash-ring locking pins are on the inside of the bowl and the splash-ring sits inside the lip of the bowl. My guess is that this change was made to prevent flour from making it’s way down the outside of the bowl as sometimes could happen with the older splash-rings. I have no supporting evidence at this time, but it would make sense that this bowl was introduced with the 1984 re-design of the Universal.
This third-generation bowl is still in production today as the model [easyazon-link asin=”B0006DOROQ”]MUZ6ER1[/easyazon-link]. The ER1 will fit both Classic Universals as well as the [easyazon-link asin=”B001V5XZGO”]Universal Plus[/easyazon-link]. However, with the new Universal Plus, people are recommending rubber bumpers be used to stabilize the bowl. While I don’t have a Universal Plus, it is my understanding that the ER 1 will be somewhat unstable without the bumpers in place on the mixer.
