The Man Who Invented Sliced Bread

You've probably heard the phrase "The greatest thing since sliced bread". And maybe you've wondered just WTF is so remarkable about sliced bread, and how there could possibly be a time before sliced bread. Did people in some long passed time just take turns biting off a communal loaf?

Well, there actually was a time before sliced bread - packaged, pre-sliced bread, that is - and it wasn't all that long ago.

The first loaf of commercially produced, pre-sliced bread was sold in Missouri in 1928. And it was sliced and packaged using a machine invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder, a jeweler, watchmaker, ophthalmologist and inventor.

Wonder Bread was created in 1930. And by 1933, sliced bread was outselling unsliced bread.

Rohwedder's machine in now in the Smithsonian.

5 thoughts on “The Man Who Invented Sliced Bread

  1. The Modesto Kid

    When you need a sandwich badly
    but you haven’t got a knife
    you can’t work it with your fingers
    and you’re painting a still life

    He’s the fella
    the man who invented sliced bread…

    1. cleek Post author

      spammers have started sending spam that looks like poems (lots of short lines). i think you tickled that heuristic just right.

  2. joel hanes

    The UNEEDA Biscuit Company put the cracker in the package
    Made the cracker barrel obsolete

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