It was 1971 when Thomas Dickson discovered that behind the natural inquisitiveness and invention he possessed as a mechanical engineer lurked the insight and drive of an entrepreneur.

Dickson was working on his food storage one weekend when he spilled some wheat on his garage floor. He vacuumed it up. That's when his engineering instincts kicked in, and he opened the vacuum bag to check out what the trip through the machine had done to the wheat.

Turns out, the wheat had become coarse flour, and Dickson had the idea that became the Kitchen Mill, a legendary home grain mill that is the foundation of Dickson's company, Orem-based K-TEC.

But if the mill is the company's foundation, Dickson's blenders are its summit. Used at restaurants and juice bars around the world, the top-quality blender — accented by high-tech ice dispensers and peristaltic pumps — has made that part of the business, Blendtec, the company's best-known line.

Dickson thinks of his company as a technology firm, and the company's goal is to sell not just small refinements of existing products, but breakthroughs that have a real impact on the health, nutrition and satisfaction of K-TEC's customers.

Dickson's enthusiasm for his products now shows itself most obviously in his cult-hit viral marketing Web site, willitblend.com. At the site, millions of visitors from around the world have watched him turn the likes of 14 feet of garden hose, makeup (compacts and brushes included) and a tiki torch into steaming piles of well-blended rubble.