'Home of Sliced Bread': A small Missouri town champions its greatest thing
In 2001, a local journalist (in Chillicothe, MO), combing through microfilm of old newspapers, stumbled upon a slice of American innovation long overlooked by local residents and state historians. The headline on an old news clipping said: “SLICED BREAD IS MADE HERE.”
It appeared on the front page of the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune on July 6, 1928, the day before the first machine-sliced bread would be sold to customers. “The Chillicothe Baking Company,” it said, “has installed a power driven multi-bladed bread slicer which performs a feat which heretofore had been considered by bakers as being impossible — namely, the slicing of loaves.”
That bakery, run by Marion “Frank” Bench, was the first in the nation to sell commercially sliced and wrapped bread. Other bakers said it couldn’t be done without the loaves losing their freshness. The bread was first sold the same year that Disney created Mickey Mouse, just months before the Great Depression. The product was a hit. Customers appreciated the convenience and ability to make uniform sandwiches.
By 1930, the Continental Baking Company introduced the world to sliced Wonder Bread. By 1933, the uniform-sized bread also created a demand for pop-up toasters, which had struggled to find a market. A Chillicothe newspaper ad promoted the breakthrough as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.”
Soon others were using the phrase “the greatest thing since sliced bread” to hype inventions that followed and, for that matter, a lot of other things.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/02/20/home-of-sliced-bread-a-small-missouri-town-boosts-its-greatest-thing/?utm_term=.ed2d51eb7ea3
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