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The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread!
Today in History -- On today’s date 94 years ago, Saturday, July 7, 1928, something happened that has been said to be “the greatest thing that ever happened” when machine-sliced bread was sold for the first time by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri.
Also on today’s date, but 142 years ago on Wednesday, July 7, 1880, noted American inventor & engineer Otto Frederick Rohwedder (1880-1960), “The Father of Sliced Bread” was born in Des Moines, Iowa.
According to Wikipedia: Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa invented the first loaf-at-a-time bread-slicing machine. A prototype he built in 1912 was destroyed in a fire & it was not until 1928 that Rohwedder had a fully working machine ready. The first commercial use of the machine was by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri, which produced their first slices on July 7, 1928. Their product, “Kleen Maid Sliced Bread,” proved to be a great success. Battle Creek, Michigan has a competing claim as the first city to sell bread pre-sliced by Rohwedder’s machine; however, historians have produced no documentation backing up Battle Creek’s claim. The bread was advertised as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.” This eventually led to the popular catch-phrase, “It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
The popularity of the above-mentioned catch-phrase is believed to derive from it’s use in 1952 by the famous American comedian Red Skelton (1913-1997), when he stated in an interview with the “Daily Times” newspaper of Salisbury, Maryland, “Don’t worry about television. It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
Rohwedder’s original bread-slicing machine is now in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
The undated left-hand photograph depicts the bespectacled visage of Otto Rohwedder, “The Father of Sliced Bread,” who was born in Des Moines, Iowa on today’s date 141 years ago, July 7, 1880. The right-hand photograph depicts an advertisement for sliced bread that appeared on page eight of the Friday, July 6, 1928 edition of the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune announcing the introduction of sliced bread on Saturday, July 7, 1928.
