![]() ![]() Still, like many of the inventors that came before and that have come since, Rohwedder slogged on, driven by a belief that what he had to offer was a game changer.Įventually, instinct and hard work paid off. Pre-sliced loaves went stale faster than whole loaves, and some shoppers felt they were “sloppy looking”. ![]() The baking industry voiced concerns about the new-fangled idea and pre-sliced bread proved a tough sell with many consumers. Undeterred by the disaster, the inventor pressed on, generating new funding, redesigning his machine and gathering the opinions of tens of thousands of people as to the perfect thickness of a slice of bread.Īfter years of graft, in 1927, Rohwedder finally designed a machine that not only sliced the bread but wrapped it too, and the following year the first sliced loaf emerged from a bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri. First came an inventor’s worst nightmare: in 1917 a fire engulfed Rohwedder’s factory, sending his prototype and all the blueprints up in smoke and setting him back several years in bringing his bread slicer to market. It may have lacked the excitement and appeal of traveling through space or time, but he was utterly convinced by his idea, and was prepared to sell his jewelry stores to fund it.īut it was an uphill struggle. Some inventors dreamed of time travel and space rockets, but not Rohwedder his goal was to develop a machine that could slice bread. Nestled inside his workshop, he would apply his expertise in jewelry and watchmaking to inventing new machines, and one in particular became an unlikely obsession. Born in Iowa in 1880, the jeweler’s apprentice went on to open up three stores of his own, but his true passion lay elsewhere. Otto Rohwedder was a jeweler by trade, but he was also an inventor and a risk-taker – an enviable combo for the modern-day tech entrepreneur. I hadn’t heard that saying in a while, but it brought back a story that is worth remembering today. “It’s the best thing since sliced bread,” he beamed, as he and his friend strolled along. A man – late sixties I’d say – had received an Alexa device for his birthday and was clearly delighted with his gift. Last week, I overheard a conversation in the street. ![]()
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