NOTEWORTHY INVENTORS:
• Work began on a prototype of a bread-slicing machine in 1916 in an abandoned warehouse. Rohwedder drew hundreds of blueprints with differing specifications. Tragedy struck in 1917 when his prototype and all of his blueprints were destroyed in a fire. • It was 10 years before Rohwedder had another machine completed, but this one was much better. While his first machine had used long metal pins to hold the sliced loaf together, the new machine tightly wrapped the loaves in waxed paper. The contraption was 5 feet wide, 3 feet high, and 6 feet deep. After being awarded a patent for the slicer, Rohwedder began searching for buyers and received mostly ridicule.
• Full-page ads declared that sliced bread was “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.” Before long, the slogan had been modified to include every new exceptional invention, referring to innovations as “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” • Two years after the launch of the bread slicer, Continental Baking Company introduced Wonder Bread in its bright, balloon-imprinted wrapper, with the word “Sliced” emblazoned in large letters. Their ad was a happy picture of families packing sandwiches for picnics. • In 1933, Rohwedder sold his rights to Iowa’s Micro-Westco Company and became vice-president and sales manager of the bakery machine division. • In 1960, a beer bottler bought the building that had formerly housed the Chillicothe Baking Company. In the storage area was a pile of metal the owner thought was junk, which he promptly disposed of. He later learned it was Rohwedder’s original slicer. The Smithsonian is home to one of Rohwedder’s second design machines.
Answer
• At 36, Rohwedder got out of the jewelry business and set out to solve a common household complaint. Loaves of bread were sold whole, and housewives didn’t like slicing it! Rohwedder devised a brief questionnaire to determine the thickness of a slice that housewives would like to see. He placed ads in several large newspapers and within a few months had received 30,000 responses.
• A 1928 issue of Modern Mechanics explained how the machine worked: “Two banks of thin sharp steel blades are utilized…While one blade moves upward, its immediate neighbor moves downward. As the blades pass through the soft bread, the loaf closes immediately behind the blades and keeps the air out… thus retaining the freshness of the loaf.”
Weekly SUDOKU
• At age 20, Davenport, Iowa native Otto Rohwedder moved to Chicago to pursue a degree in optometry at a college of ophthalmology in the Windy City. After a year in the profession, Otto made a drastic career change and began an apprenticeship with a local jeweler. At 25, he settled in St. Joseph, Missouri, and by 32, he had acquired three jewelry shops. In his spare time, he began tinkering with new inventions.
• He finally persuaded a friend whose bakery was on the verge of bankruptcy to give it a try. Frank Bench, owner of Chillicothe Baking Company produced the first slices in July, 1928, and put it on the shelves as “Kleen Maid Sliced Bread.” Within two weeks, his bread sales had increased by 2,000%. The public loved sliced bread and the machine’s success was launched.
Answer
What’s the greatest thing since sliced bread? How about sliced bread itself? Here’s the scoop on one of the most beneficial inventions of the 20th century.
King CROSSWORD
OTTO ROHWEDDER