- Behold, sliced bread.
But where did it come from?
Meet Otto Frederick Rohwedder
born in Iowa in 1880.
Okay, okay, Otto didn't invent
the idea of sliced bread.
Bread itself is an ancient invention.
Over thousands of years many people
independently figured out
how to bake and prepare it.
However, Otto did invent
the bread slicing machine
that makes it possible to sell
loaves of bread pre-sliced.
After growing up in Iowa,
Otto moved down to Missouri
with hopes of becoming
a successful jeweler
and he was off to a good start.
He owned three stores
and seemed set for even bigger success,
but as time went on he became
more and more interested
in building a mechanical bread slicer.
Otto mulled over this idea for years
and by 1916 he decided to
sell his jewelry stores
and make his bread slicer a reality.
The mechanical bread slicer
was off to a rocky start.
Otto's first prototype was unsuccessful
and in 1917 the factory he'd
planned to use burned down
along with his blueprints and prototypes.
At this point, most people
would have given up.
Luckily, Otto wasn't most people.
By 1928, he'd created a
machine that both sliced
and wrapped loaves of bread.
In July of that year pre-sliced bread
was sold for the first time
and the invention's
popularity skyrocketed.
Today, most loaves come pre-sliced
and if you think something
is particularly impressive
you might describe it as the best thing
since sliced bread, all due
to Otto's stuff of genius.
