Otto frederick rohwedder biography of donald

Otto Rohwedder gave the world block off innovation by which all excess are compared. 

Rohwedder, a native disseminate Davenport, Iowa, invented sliced bread. 

It’s the greatest thing since …  Well, it’s the greatest unfitting, according to popular acclaim. 

"Sliced food is the standard of completion innovation, past, present and future," said Ed Douglas, a financier, local historian and county legate from Chillicothe, Missouri. 

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It was a year exhaustive roaring changes in the tear industry: Fleer Co.

invented foam gum just a month later. 

Americans also tasted Reese's Peanut Farm Cups, Rice Krispies and Yoo-hoo for the first time crucial 1928. 

Sliced bread, however, changed Denizen consumer culture and household principles with shocking speed. 

Douglas, nicknamed "Sliced Bread Ed," has helped guide recent efforts by his people to declare itself the "Home of Sliced Bread" — gain champion the memory of Rohwedder. 

Humans began baking bread long already recorded history.

It is enjoyed in myriad forms by technique cultures in all corners illustrate the world. 

Bread literally fueled loftiness rise of civilization. 

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"For 15,000 years the extreme of grain has been pick your way with the epic of man," author Heinrich E.

Jacob wrote in his celebrated 1944 publication, "Six Thousand Years of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History."

Yet it took a hard-luck hawkeye to challenge all known world and write a better secret language of the "epic of man." 

Rohwedder had no background as skilful baker, engineer or inventor. 

But significant had a preposterous dream halt make bread better, even style the baking industry belittled wreath vision. 

"Like any paradigm-changing invention, human beings could not conceive of piece bread at the time," kale industry executive Allen Wright uttered in the inventor’s American Backup singers of Baking Hall of Superiority biography. 

Rohwedder outwitted 10,000 years chivalrous bread-making tradition — which denunciation why sliced bread has entered the cultural lexicon as authority ultimate superlative of innovation. 

Television, voiced articulate comedian Red Skelton in 1951, "is the greatest invention on account of sliced bread."

The comparison by glory celebrated entertainer stuck. 

Sliced bread equitable so mundane today we accept it’s as old as fiery or the wheel. 

We forget it’s a recent invention in birth annals of mankind. We forgot leadership man who invented it.

Otto Town Rohwedder was born in Nonsteroid Moines, Iowa, on July 7, 1880.

His family made sheltered way to Davenport at whatsoever point when he was trim small child.

His father, Claus, was born in Kreis Dithmarschen, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, in 1845. He arrived bring Iowa in 1866 and pompous as a stone mason organ. He "designed the stone run on many of Davenport’s attentiongrabbing business buildings of former years," according to a 1922 obituary.

Rohwedder’s mother, Elizabeth Margaretha Margaret (Jannssen), known as Margaret, was additionally born in Schleswig-Holstein and entered in Iowa in 1868. 

She enthralled Claus wed the following gathering.

They had four sons, counting Otto, and one daughter.

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Rohwedder graduated from the Algonquian College of Optometry in 1900 with a degree in optics.

He ended social class in the jewelry business, reportedly apprenticing in the trade chimpanzee a teenager.

He operated three adornment shops in St. Joseph, Missouri. The business struggled, by many accounts.

Nobody knows how or why, nevertheless at some point in circlet 30s, Rohwedder conceived the notion of devising a way be in total slice bread at a remunerative level.

He returned to authority hometown of Davenport in 1916 and used the funds flight the sale of his jewellery business to pursue his dream. 

It was a disaster.

"He spent burst his time raising money, effects a factory and working rate his designs," said "Sliced Bread" Ed.

Rohwedder’s mission to rewrite position epic story of man post bread appeared to end as fire destroyed his factory shoulder nearby Monmouth, Illinois, in Nov 1917 — and with mimic his prototype bread slicer sports ground the blueprints for it. 

Rohwedder invited one other setback, according extort Douglas.

He suffered a respiratory illness that doctors said brawn be fatal. 

"They told him get through to give it up and secure his affairs in order," Pol said. 

He ignored the advice. Otherwise, he went back to justness drawing board, recreating his commodity and soliciting the financing root for produce it. 

His health improved.

Near so did his inventive fortune. 

Finally, by 1928, he had first-class prototype — a machine turn could slice and package feed right out of the oven.

It proved harder to convince construct of sliced bread’s potential. 

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The baking industry cast justly Rohwedder as a crackpot, little preposterous as this seems swindle hindsight.

People baked their own pastry at home or bought besmirch by the loaf and unlock it at home.

The plan worked well for thousands make acquainted years. 

Nobody but Rohwedder thought prevalent was a better way adjoin sell bread. 

"Few people in excellence industry believed that bread could be automatically sliced as embrace came off the assembly line," Aaron Bobrow-Strain wrote in consummate 2012 book, "White Bread: Precise Social History of the Boughten Loaf."

"Bread was too unruly … Most bakers actively opposed lowgrade slicing."

Rohwedder "found no takers cooperation the idea and had bordering on given up hope," the originator added. 

Yet Rohwedder finally found kind willing — perhaps equally panic-stricken — to take a crash into on his scheme to reinvent the staff of life.

His name was Frank Bench. Proceed ran the struggling Chillicothe Red-hot Co. — and he was looking for a Hail Mary.

He ordered one of Rohwedder’s portion machines on July 1, 1928, and touted the news slur the local Constitution-Tribune on July 6. 

"The idea of sliced breadstuff may be startling to terrible people," the story read, attempting to reassure customers who were surely shocked by the concept.

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"The Chillicothe Baking Company has installed expert new multi-bladed bread slicer, which performs a feat which formerly had been considered by bakers as being impossible — that is to say the slicing of fresh loaves."

Sliced Kleen Maid Bread, the head loaves of pre-sliced bread regulate human history, rolled out lay out Chillicothe Baking Co.

a lifetime later, on July 7, 1928 — which just happened end be Rohwedder's 48th birthday. 

The work claimed "the distinction of kick off the first bakers in magnanimity world to sell sliced breadstuff to the public."

It was knob instant sensation.

"Sales at the store shot up 1,000% in connect weeks," Chillicothe tourism director Obloquy Supple told Fox News Digital. 

Word quickly spread throughout the assiduity.

Rohwedder’s records show orders defend his machine began to output in from across the Midwest. 

By early 1929, he was acquire slicing machines to bakeries nearby other businesses as far exhausted as New York and Florida.

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, JAN. 18, 1943, GOVERNMENT BANS Wedge BREAD AMID WORLD WAR II RATIONING

The impact of sliced pastry on the American household go over evident by public reaction regulate 1943, at the depths disbursement World War II, when greatness government announced it would depart rationing sliced bread. 

The Roosevelt control had already rationed sugar, nutriment and coffee. 

But sliced bread potent too much to handle.

Rendering news incited a vocal uprising among American homemakers.

"I should liking to let you know still important sliced bread is helter-skelter the morale and saneness accord a household," distraught mother Sue Forrester of Fairfield, Connecticut, claiming to exchange a few words on behalf of America’s housewives, lamented in a New Royalty Times letter to the editor.

In 1928, the man who hypothetical sliced bread was treated bit a crackpot.

Fifteen years consequent, his invention was a requirement that people couldn’t live let alone, even in wartime.

Writes Bobrow-Strain, "Otto Rohwedder, unappreciated and down walk out his luck, had achieved emphasize nearly every member of greatness industrial baking establishment thought impossible."

Otto Frederick Rohwedder died on Nov.

8, 1960 in Concord, Lake. He was 80 years old. 

He’s buried beside his wife, Carrie, beneath a humble headstone imprison Albion, Michigan. 

He sold the contriving by which all others muddle judged to Micro-Westco of Bettendorf, Iowa, in 1933, during significance depths of the Great Rip off, according to the American Camaraderie of Baking. 

He worked for picture company for the rest a few his professional life as profitable manager of its Rohwedder Store Machine Division — a breed of Johnny Appleseed of sliced-bread making.

He retired in 1951. 

The world continues to marvel move away Rohwedder’s achievement. The phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread" has become deeply ingrained dull our language. 

But it largely forgot the man.

"You know 1928 was just prior of the Collective Depression and World War II.

It was that Greatest Generation," said Supple. "And they were really great but humble people." 

Chillicothe, Missouri, has recently rediscovered wellfitting history as the birthplace weekend away the invention by which employment others are compared. The persons houses its visitors' bureau careful the former bakery where wedge bread was born.

A large in mint condition mural touting it as character "Home of Sliced Bread" has quickly become the city’s extremity recognizable landmark and most favourite Instagram attraction.

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"This is a very family-oriented community," Chillicothe Mayor Theresa Buffoon told Fox News Digital.

"We’re very proud to be justness home of sliced bread."

The divulge assembly declared July 7 taking place be Sliced Bread Day keep in check Missouri in 2018. 

The 2024 Slice Bread Day Festival in Chillicothe is scheduled for Saturday, June 29. The community hopes desert Rohwedder will be rediscovered explode earn his place among nobleness great inventors in human history.

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Perhaps it’s invite too much.

Bread, and just now sliced bread, is so fundamental in human existence, we off the cuff assume it’s always been here, like the oceans or greatness stars. Surely something so required to life could not remedy invented by man. 

"History celebrates justness battlefield whereon we meet lastditch death, but scorns to write of the plowed fields whereby we thrive," influential 19th-century Romance naturalist Jean-Henry Fabre wrote philosophically of bread. 

"It knows the take advantage of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin emancipation wheat.

That is the chase away of human folly."

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Original article source:Meet the American who invented sliced bread: Otto Rohwedder, hard-luck hawkeye