Otto Frederick Rohwedder

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Electric bread slicer in a St. Louis bakery in 1930
Plaque in Chillicothe, Missouri. This building once housed the bakery, where machine-cut bread was first sold in 1928.

Otto Frederick Rohwedder (born July 6, 1880 in Des Moines , Iowa , † November 8, 1960 in Concord , Michigan ) was an American inventor. He developed the first industrially usable electric bread slicer and thus revolutionized the baked goods industry.

Life

The son of a German immigrant family grew up as the youngest of five children in Davenport, Iowa . After training in (fine) optics and optometry at the Northern Illinois College of Ophthalmology and Otology in Chicago , Rohwedder initially worked as a jeweler for a few years . His preoccupation with clocks inspired him to design new machines, and so in 1916 he sold his three jewelry stores in order to concentrate entirely on the development of a new type of bread slicer that was to be able to cut whole loaves into evenly thin slices in one operation . But a fire in a factory in Monmouth, Illinois , which was supposed to produce his machine, destroyed not only the first prototype, but also all of Rohwedder's construction plans. It wasn't until ten years later that he succeeded in building an improved prototype that not only cut the bread, but also wrapped it up. In 1928 Rohwedder registered a patent for his invention and found a bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri , which bought his machine. The first machine-cut and packaged bread was sold there on July 7, 1928.

In the years that followed, more and more bakeries took over Rohwedder's invention and sales figures rose sharply. Demand was also fueled by the invention of the fully automatic pop-up toaster , which had come onto the market shortly before (1927). In 1933, for the first time nationwide, more sliced ​​than uncut bread was sold nationwide.

In the same year Rohwedder sold his invention to the company Micro-Westco Co. in Bettendorf (Iowa) and joined the company as Vice President. After retiring in 1951, he moved to Albion, Michigan , where he lived until his death. He was also buried in the Riverside Cemetery there.

meaning

Rohwedder's invention not only revolutionized the baking industry, but also found expression in everyday American culture. The phrase the greatest thing since sliced ​​bread is often used to emphasize the importance of a new invention or product.

A copy of Rohwedder's bread slicer is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC today .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/rohwedder.html (accessed on June 28, 2013)
  2. a b c http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/breadslicer.htm (accessed June 28, 2013)
  3. Otto Frederick Rohwedder in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  4. The best thing since sliced ​​bread? , Silicon Valley Mercury News, Feb. 7, 2007. (Retrieved June 28, 2013)
  5. History of sliced ​​bread little known on 75th anniversary ( Memento August 12, 2003 in the Internet Archive ), Kansas City Star, July 29, 2003. (Retrieved June 28, 2013)