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Forgotten Americans: How Sliced Bread Became The Greatest Thing
Inspired by recent posts on American inventors.
The phrase “the greatest thing since sliced bread” denotes any new, convenient and fantastic invention that enters our everyday life. Its origin lies in the 20th century and my favorite first attribution of its use is by comedian Red Skelton telling a Maryland newspaper in 1952 that “television is the greatest thing since sliced bread“.
(Otto Frederick Rohwedder)
But someone had to first invent the bread slicer in order for the phrase to have any meaning. For that, we need to thank Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa. Bread had been around for thousands of years; baked in loaves it was sold to customers uncut. Otto was a jeweler, and though I can’t find direct confirmation of this, it may be that this background and access to jeweler’s blades ignited his imagination about creating a device that could automatically slice bread at the bakery.
Rohwedder began working on his idea in 1912 and eventually built a prototype, which was destroyed in a fire in 1917, driving him into bankruptcy. Obsessed by his idea, he refused to give up, finally obtaining new financial backing and recreating his machine in 1927 (the patent application for a machine for slicing and wrapping bread was filed on November 26, 1928, U.S. 1,867,377).
The first commercial application of the new slicing machine was by the Chillicothe Baking Company, located in Chillicothe, Missouri, about ninety miles from Kansas City. The company took out ads touting its sliced bread as the “greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.” Sliced bread was a gigantic consumer favorite, and was soon adopted by the rest of the industry. Within five years, 80% of American bread was sold pre-sliced. In a serendipitous occurrence, it probably helped that the electric toaster had been invented in 1909.
The biggest boost for sliced bread was Continental Baking Company’s introduction of Wonder Bread in 1930 which became an enormously successful brand.
In 1931, Otto joined the Micro-Westco Co. of Bettendorf, Iowa, becoming vice-president of the Rohwedder Bakery Machine Division. He obtained six more patents, all related to bread slicing. Retiring in 1951, he passed away in 1960 at the age of 80.
The Smithsonian Museum has the original bread slicing machine.
Thank you, @gumbymark, it is posts like this with obscure, but interesting, information that make Ricochet a daily habit with me. It’s nice to have some respite from the cultural/political wars.
One of the tidbits that has struck me in my career as a patent attorney is how often inventions are made by people from outside the industry or technology that is the focus of the invention. Often the invention involves bringing a technology or idea from another area to bear on the “problem” at hand.
And Betty White is older than sliced bread.
So much more simple than IWS of Cheese. Someday when I have time I’ll attempt to describe the process .
My dad taught me Sliced bread was invented to John Sliced, similar to how the Suspension bridge was invented by Eddy Suspension. I guess he was misinformed.
I had a dad like that! He was endlessly entertaining…once I figured out he was always pulling my leg.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, selling sliced bread was illegal for a brief time during WWII. I remember the slicing machines at the bakery during the post-war years.
It just shows how important creativity needs persistence! Thanks, Mark!
It was a nasty thing, though. The invention of the pop-up toaster was the true automation breakthrough. The guy who patented it built a house in my neighborhood, an absolute castle.
Pre-sliced / Wonder Bread changed the popular expectations of bread, no? From homemade to pre-fab, from thick and crusty to soft & spongy. It was more convenient – and scientific! and modern! as well, but I wonder if if tasted like an improvement.
I’m willing to allow a deficiency in the taste department but the convenience of having structurally similar pieces of bread while making sandwiches is undeniable.
I like to get a loaf of crusty artisan bread and tear it apart like a savage with my bare hands. I pity those who buy pre-sliced bread. Eat your bread like a man.
How about rye breads? Because of the shapes of the loaves, they tend to have each slice different. Yet, they can make a good sandwich.
Depends on how different each slice is.
I respectfully dissent. Not to say that sliced bread corrupted American mores–or not exactly–but I think there’s money in a book about inventions of the Depression (either made at the time or that became popular then) & how they ruined American life. Food is the obvious center, but I have my suspicions that it doesn’t stop there.
Or, to speak like the philosophers, Americans should ask themselves seriously whether the extreme case proves a real necessity.
I dissent from your dissent. The inventions of that era unified our country. They effectively created the melting pot for the Ellis Island era immigrants. That unified country was able to save the world from tyranny.
The imaginary mores that were corrupted are those of the rest of the world. They were corrupted in that their backwardness was highlighted.
Okay, I’ll take a different tack on that quote. “Television is the greatest thing since sliced bread?” Much as I love Skelton, I would introduce some quotes from one of his heroes, Fred Allen:
“I have been in vaudeville, I have been in theatre, and I have been in radio. Currently, I am in trouble. Trouble, spelled sideways, is television. The reason they call television The Medium is that nothing is well done.”
Wow you missed the whole thing. Unsliced bread is now available in ever greater quality and types. Offered pre-sliced bread folks responded by eating more bread. If there is a problem, it is that the government subsidized bread and subsidizes and influences advertising. More choice is good not bad, but folks have to inform themselves, especially about the most important thing in their lives, eating.
And now grocery stores sell fresh baked bread with the option to buy it sliced or unsliced.
Sliced bread < Sex and canned beer
Not to be a contrarian, but I would like to have the option to buy a regular loaf of unsliced bread. There are times I want to make Texas toast or thick slice open-faced sandwiches, and very few stores around here carry thick sliced bread . . .
I have no idea what you’re talking about! Some examples!
Dear Lord, I hope this is a parody!
https://www.amazon.com/Bamboo-Slicer-Stainless-Silky-Road/dp/B07C9DTG39/ref=sr_1_3_sspa?crid=U11DORDAVWQQ&keywords=bread+slicers+for+homemade+bread&qid=1550497167&s=gateway&sprefix=Bread+sli%2Caps%2C155&sr=8-3-spons&psc=1
(This is not a paid endorsement. It does not represent my views, or of the views of Amazon, the Department of the Army or the Louisiana Department of Fish and Wildlife)
No bread was harmed during the construction of this comment.
Nice post Gumby. I’ve always wondered about that saying “The Greatest Thing since Sliced Bread” not for the reason cited by that grouch Titus that somehow sliced bread wasn’t a good thing. It was. Rather, a commercial slicing machine would have a little use prior to the development of cellophane in the mid-1920’s which was the important innovation in food packaging for baked goods. Wrapping fresh baked bread in cellophane increased its’ shelf life at the market as well as its’ useful life at the consumers home. This allowed there to be fewer, but larger, bakeries serving a wider radius with the cost savings of economies of scale passed along to the consumer. Cellophane was also a godsend for grocery-store meat counters – precut pork chops and chicken breasts wrapped in cellophane in which the customer could see the product versus being wrapped in brown butcher paper increased sales and profit margins at the meat counter.
You first
So was Red Skelton.
So now we’re having a debate about whether sliced bread was a good thing or not.
Slow news day.
Ricochet: Where we can argue over sliced bread! Is this a great place or what?
Convenience, maybe, but it doesn’t make as good a sandwich.
Pre-sliced rolls, on the other hand – that’s a great invention.
Bread is not ruined by slicing it; there are pros and cons, but for most people convenience and uniformity of product offers a net benefit.
I decry food snobbery. Let people make their own choices, and be secure enough in yourself not to make fun of them.