We’ve all heard the phrase, “the greatest thing since sliced bread,” but where did it begin? It was an inventor named Otto Rohwedder who knew he could improve on the whole loaf of bread.
“He’d spent a number, I’d say eight or ten years, putting together- raising money building a prototype of his idea, building a factory ad all that, and it burned to the ground and he lost it all,” says Ed Douglass, Presiding Commissioner, Livingston County, Mo.
And if seeing his work lost in a fire wasn’t enough, he soon received more bad news. Hid doctor told him he had a lung disease and would die within about a year. But Rohwedder didn’t give up on his dream.
Ignoring the advice of his doctor, he got back to work on the sliced bread machine. But he needed someone to partner with him –someone willing to try out the new contraption. He found the man in Chillicothe baker Frank Bench.
“Our baker wasn’t doing that well and he said, ‘I’ll take a chance,’” Douglass added.
John Phipps: The Next Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread
Mr. Bench and Mr. Rohwedder – the baker and the inventor were ready to bring to the world something commonplace today.
“July 7, 1928 we were the first bakery in the world to offer sliced bread to the public,” says Douglass.
Sliced bread was born. The inventor, Rohwedder didn’t become rich from his invention but sales of sliced bread took off.
“That turned out to be not so good a time in economics In 1929 we had the crash and Mr. Rohwedder actually had to sell his operation to what became Wonder Bread,” says Douglass.
Soon sliced bread became the standard that all families desired.
“It’s a great story because everyone knows the phrase the greatest thing since sliced. Nobody says that’s the greatest thing since the iPhone or anything else,” Douglass says.
But when did that phrase, the greatest thing since sliced bread begin? No one knows for sure but some point to the sacrifices made during World War II
“When they shut down bread bakeries that were slicing bread, housewives were so outraged that they rescinded that about 60 days later. And we think that’s when the greatest things since sliced bread, and so I don’t think we know exactly who the first person to say that was,” says Douglass.
Today you can come to the bakery building where it all began and see one of the earliest machines…plus this town hosts many events each year to coincide with its proclamation as the home of sliced bread.
