Bread has been a source of nutrition for thousands of years now, with evidence of humans consuming the food dating back to the Old Stone Age period. However, sliced bread has only been around since the late 1920s and was once prohibited for sale in the 1940s. With this information in mind, how was this modern-day convenience created, and what led to the ban of this product?
Prior to the invention of the bread slicer, bread was sold in loaves and required the consumers to cut the bread on their own. Because of this, an idea struck Otto Rohwedder – the man who took the world by storm with his creation of the bread slicer machine. Rohwedder was a jeweller’s apprentice when the concept dawned upon him. He was never pleased with his job and thus began experimenting with the machinery laying around the jewellery shop to develop his idea. By 1912, prototypes and blueprints of the final model were completed, however, despite his efforts, a fire soon destroyed his work in 1917. While Rohwedder faced these setbacks, he continued to work. Eventually, in 1928, he created another machine model and sold a copy to his friend Frank Bench who owned the bakery Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri, USA. Another machine was then sent to Gustav Papendick, another baker who later helped improve the engine to keep the slices of bread fresh longer.
Around the same time the invention began spreading, advertisements for sliced bread also started, with the first mention of the product introduced in the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune newspaper. Bakeries soon began purchasing Rohwedder’s creation, and thus the production of sliced bread began. As 1930 approached, bread slicers became the norm in bakeries and citizens from across the country now consumed factory sliced bread.
Sliced bread was a success and enjoyed by many, however, as the world war heightened in January 1943, the product soon became banned by the government as a way to conserve resources and keep prices low for citizens. Contrary to what the government thought, the public reactions to this decision were negative. The main reason for this was because of the convenience the product brought to families. People no longer had to spend time cutting bread themselves, and because these communities were now accustomed to the luxury of sliced bread, many individuals no longer had the tools to cut the bread themselves. As a result, people began advocating and fighting for the ban to be lifted; some even went to court to address this ban. (crazy to think how much sliced bread meant to people.) Along with this, in a report done by Harrisburg Telegraph at the time, they discovered that businesses saw a 5-10% drop in sales since the ban was put in place. Although there are many reasons that could explain this drop, many collectively agreed that it was the ban on sliced bread that resulted in this decline. With all of these complaints being recorded, the ban was finally lifted in March 1943 and since then, sliced bread has been enjoyed freely by citizens around the world.
Although pre-sliced bread is something that we take for granted in today’s world, it has come a long way, and if it weren’t for Otto Rohwedder creating his bread slicer machine, we’ll probably still be cutting our own loaves of bread today. There is no doubt that this invention changed the way for humanity, and as a result, it has created a significant convenience on the way we live in the modern-day.
Sources:
Nix, Elizabeth. “Who Invented Sliced Bread?” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 16 Jan. 2015, https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-sliced-bread.
“The Time the U.S. Government Banned Sliced Bread.” Mental Floss, 3 Jan. 2019, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/569606/time-us-government-banned-sliced-bread.
“When Was Sliced Bread Invented?: History of Sliced Bread.” Gold Medal Bakery, 7 Oct. 2021, https://www.goldmedalbakery.com/blog/when-was-sliced-bread-invented/.
Header Image: https://historydaily.org/sliced-bread-best-thing-since-itself
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