The World Debut of “The Greatest Thing” –
Sliced Bread!
Bread is one of the world’s oldest prepared foods, made and consumed around the globe for thousands of years. But why wasn’t it sold pre-sliced until 1928? In part, being sliced leads the bread to go stale faster, so inventors sought to create a machine that would both slice and wrap.
Missouri jeweler Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented the first successful bread slicer and wrapper in 1912, but it was destroyed in a fire. Fifteen years later he tweaked and patented his design, but it fell short. Though the bread was sliced, it wasn’t sliced neatly, and loaves didn’t sell. Gustav Papendick later bought the machine and perfected it, slicing the loaves more cleanly and wrapping them in wax paper. Continue reading