What's better than sliced bread? 75 years of it

AP ^ | August 2, 2003 | PAUL WENSKE

[sarcasm]

CHILLICOTHE, Mo. -- "It's the greatest thing since sliced bread" is used to hype everything from toasters to cell phones.

The phrase is the ultimate depiction of innovative achievement and American know-how.

Yet few know when and where this icon of cultural convenience made its debut in the American marketplace.

But thanks to a curious newspaper editor, the northwest Missouri town of Chillicothe can claim the distinction of being the first place in the world where sliced bread was sold to the public, 75 years ago this summer.

Kathy Stortz Ripley, editor of the Constitution-Tribune, was incredulous when she came upon a news story dated July 7, 1928, announcing that the Chillicothe Baking Co. was now marketing wrapped loaves of sliced bread to local grocery stores.

"I couldn't believe something this big I hadn't heard of before," said Ripley, who was researching Chillicothe's history for a book.

An accompanying ad read: "Announcing: The Greatest Forward Step in the Baking Industry Since Bread was Wrapped -- Sliced Kleen Maid Bread."

But the boast is not without controversy. Battle Creek, Mich., the nation's cereal capital, also claims to be the home of sliced bread. But that claim seems half-baked. When pressed this month, Battle Creek's historians were unable to produce proof.

Ripley took her find to Livingston County Library Director Karen Hicklin, who identified the home of the defunct Chillicothe Bakery as a brick building now housing an electronics supply shop. Sadly, the bread slicer was junked years ago.

Hicklin eventually found old-timers who described how the bulky machine, invented by itinerant Iowa jeweler Otto Rohwedder, raised and lowered its steel blades and stuffed the sliced loaves into wax-paper wrappers.

While credited with the invention, Rohwedder is lost to history. Even the Smithsonian's American History Museum lacks clues to the origin of sliced bread.

Few inventions have so monumentally capitalized on the consumer's love of convenience.

"What could be easier than to reach into a wrapped loaf of bread and pull out a slice?" said Mark Dirkes, a spokesman for Interstate Bakeries Corp. in Kansas City, which owns Wonder Bread.

By 1930, Rohwedder had sold his patent. Inventors and bakers improved his clunky machine.

Wonder Bread, which already wrapped its loaves, built its own machines and used delivery trucks to market sliced bread across the nation.

The bright, balloon-imprinted wrappers of Wonder-Cut Bread advertised "Sliced" in big letters.

But the true story begins in Chillicothe at M.F. Bench's Chillicothe Baking Co.

Bob Staton, now in his 80s, remembers the 10-foot long machine with a "bunch of blades that swung up and swung down" making slices less than an inch thick.

Initially, many bakers rejected the invention, saying the bread would fall apart and grow stale too fast. They contended consumers didn't care whether their bread loaves were sliced.

Rohwedder labored over his invention more than 13 years before bakers gave it a shot.

At the height of World War II, the government ordered bakeries to stop slicing bread. The country needed airplanes more than it needed bread-slicing blades.

The ban did not go over well and was lifted three months later.

So why hasn't Chillicothe capitalized on its fame?

One reason is that the memory faded in the decades after the Chillicothe Baking Co. closed. Another is that they don't have the bread slicer, so there's nothing for tourists to look at.

Still, Ripley, the editor, said she would like to see something done.

"It's hard to believe sliced bread was just invented in 1928 -- and that it was invented here."

[Jeff Chandler]

>>"I couldn't believe something this big I hadn't heard of before," said Ripley<<

Believe it or not.

[jocon307]

LOL, good catch.

And good post. Let's start a real discussion here, as to bread, I much prefer Pepperidge Farm, Arnold's is awful.

Carry on!

[Jeff Chandler]

>>. Let's start a real discussion here<<

Nah, this thread is toast.

[Wilhelm Tell]

Rohwedder labored over his invention more than 13 years before bakers gave it a shot.

So he worked on his invention from 1915 to 1928. He spent 13 years working on his invention, and all the while everyone rejected his idea. Years of hearing people say, "You are wasting your time. No one will ever want sliced bread." 13 years. Still, Rohwedder kept working on his bread slicer -- because he knew it was a good idea.

I admire people who keep on creating something in spite of opposition. It takes character to keep plugging away when everyone says you are wrong. It can be a long, lonely wait -- waiting for the world to catch up with you when you know you have a good idea. Every day our lives are affected by people who either created or improved something. We will never know the names of most of these people.

[snopercod]

Who would have believed back then that the smell of baking bread would be listed as a "pollutant" by the federal government.

Bakeries are now required to have polution controls on their ovens to get rid of the offensive "Volatile Organic Compounds".

I predict that soon we will be buying our daily bread from China like everything else we need to live.