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- This column by John Cosway
is a mix of 50 years of media memories and 20 years of buying
and selling experiences via live and online auctions, flea markets,
antique stores and markets etc
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- Cosway's Corner -
Evolution of toast
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- No matter how you slice it, the story
of toast is tasty
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- By John Cosway
The next time you pop a slice of bread into your 21st century
toaster, give a nod to early 20th century inventors, a Missouri
bakery and Wonder Bread.
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- They all played a role in the evolution of the toasting and
slicing of bread for the convenience of restaurants and home
diners everywhere.
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- We have all heard the expression "the greatest thing
since sliced bread" to describe new inventions, but how
many people know who invented the automatic bread slicing machine?
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- And, in the vein of the age-old chicken or the egg question,
which came first, the toaster or sliced bread?
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- Bread has been baked and cut by various methods for thousands
of years, but electrical devices for toasting and slicing bread
weren't invented until the early 1900s - and yes, the toaster
came first.
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- Who baked the world's first loaf of bread thousands of years
ago is a mystery, but it is known primitive baking, slicing and
toasting methods were used up to the 20th century.
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- Toasting by electrical means became a reality in the early
1900s.
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- Historians say the evolution of the toaster began in 1905
when Albert Marsh, an American metallurgist from Pontiac, Illinois,
invented the filament wire required for toasting bread. The wire,
nickel-chromium, also known as ni-chrome, could be heated repeatedly
without breaking.
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- In 1909, General Electric unveiled its first electric toaster
for home use, invented by technician Frank Shailor, a GE employee.
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 Shailor's D-12 open
air toaster required users to turn slices by hand for toasting
on both sides, but North Americans quickly warmed to his porcelain-based
toaster, which sold for $3 for a plain base and $4.50 for the
decorated model.
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- While the D-12 was welcomed, having to hover over your toaster
and the pain and cursing associated with fingers being burned
while turning the toast dampened the positive vibes.
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- Story has it that in 1913, Hazel Copeman of Flint, Michigan,
and her successful inventor/ entrepreneur/husband, Lloyd Groff
Copeman, were shopping when she noticed toasters in a window.
She challenged him to invent a toaster that would flip bread
automatically.
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- And Lloyd, already known for his 1909 invention of the electric
stove, obliged. Gentleman that he was, he patented the toast
turner invention under his wife's name.
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- Their toaster and the Copeman Electric Stove Co., formed
in 1912 to sell electric stoves, caught the attention of Westinghouse
and in 1913, it began offering the toast turner for sale for
home use.
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- Interesting side-notes about Lloyd, who died at 74 in 1956:
His parents were Canadian, the rubber ice cube tray is among
his almost 700 patents and his granddaughter is singer Linda
Ronstadt.
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- The evolution of the toaster continued with various tweaks,
but the next major innovation came in 1919 during WW1 when Charles
P. Strite, a Minneapolis native tired of having his toast burn
in the cafeteria of the manufacturing plant he worked at in Stillwater,
Minnesota.
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- The master mechanic's pop-up toaster, with springs and a
variable timer, received a patent for commercial use on Oct.
18, 1921. The Waters-Genter Co. was launched the same year to
manufacture it for restaurants.
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- Strite's 1925 patent for home toasters was quickly followed
by an avalanche of sales across North America under the brand
name Toastmaster.
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- While toast lovers were content with bread that wasn't burned
beyond their tastes, they still had to cut their loaves to have
slices fit into toaster slots.
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 Enter Otto Frederick
Rohwedder, credited as the inventor of the world's first automated
bread slicer. A jeweller by trade, this Iowa native spent 15
years tweaking his invention. His progress was delayed for years
by a 1917 fire that destroyed his blueprints and prototype.
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- In 1928, his invention finally was a go and the Chillicothe
Baking Company in Chillicothe, Missouri, made history in becoming
the first bakery to use it commercially in July 1928. Rohwedder's
slicer also packaged the finished product.
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- That eventful day in the history of bread - advertised in
the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune by M.F. "Frank"
Bench, owner of the Chillicothe Baking Co. - would put the spotlight
on the company's Kleen Maid Sliced Bread line.
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- In a nutshell, Bench and Rohwedder were friends. Rohwedder
had been unsuccessful in asking other bakers to adopt his automated
bread, but Bench said why not? Critics apparently thought sliced
bread would cause the bread to go stale faster.
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- Wonder Bread, which got its start in 1921 as a new bread
product of the Taggart Baking Company of Indianapolis, became
the first to mass-distribute packaged loaves of pre-sliced bread
in 1930.
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- Three years later, bakeries across North American standardized
the size of sliced breads with toasters in mind and toaster sales
popped out of sight.
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- It is said Rohwedder, who died in 1960 at age 80, was the
one coined the phrase "the greatest thing since sliced bread"
later in life referring to other inventions.
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- For reasons unknown, Chillicothe as the home of sliced bread
got lost in the passage of time and it would take the observant
Constitution-Tribune news editor to spot the 1928 ad in the archives
73 years later and realized its significance to town history.
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- In 2001, Catherine Stortz Ripley, the paper's news editor,
spent months combing through early editions on microfilm researching
town history for a Dateline - Livingston County book.
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- And there it was, a July 6, 1928, headline reading: "Sliced
Bread is Made Here. Chillicothe Baking Co. the First Bakers in
the World to Sell This Product to the Public."
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- Two years later, Ripley invited Otto Rohwedder's 88-year-old
son, Richard, to Chillicothe for an interview and the scrapbook
clippings he brought from Arkansas left no doubt Chillicothe
was, indeed, the undisputed home of sliced bread.
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 The Chamber of Commerce
couldn't have been more delighted and the city, an agricultural
community with a population of about 9,000, quickly adopted "The Home of Sliced Bread"
as its slogan. The city's authenticated claim appeared in the
Ripley's Believe It Or Not series.
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- "Chillicothe has used this as a source of pride to rally
around," Ed Douglas, the Chillicothe Sliced Bread Committee
chairman, tells the Wayback Times.
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- "We are proud of the fact that our city is the home
of what we believe is the standard of all innovation, past, present
and future," he says. "No one says 'that is the greatest
thing since the iPod or the cell phone or the computer.' The
comparison is always sliced bread."
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- Douglas says much has been done to promote Chillicothe as
the Home of Sliced Bread, including an historical marker at the
original site, an annual bread-baking contest, a prominent mural,
a museum display etc., but there is more to do.
"We plan to ultimately build an innovation museum about
sliced bread. One of our first steps towards this is having PBS
do a video on this story that we can show to visitors."
- And, by the way, if you have an original 1928 bread slicer,
give Ed a call.
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- Meanwhile, as we launch 2011, there are hundreds of modern
toasters in a variety of shapes and colours, all designed to
provide the perfect slice.
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- Inventors with perhaps a little too much time on their hands
have developed toasters that imprint logos and images on toast,
including the:
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- Volkswagen Minibus Toaster, with VW logo toast. Apparently,
only 5,000 were manufactured for a Japan Volkswagen dealership
promotion. They were not for sale, but some originals have shown
up on eBay, selling for more than $200 each.
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- Star Wars toaster, available at $54.99 from shop.starwars.com.
Burns a Darth Vader imprint on toast.
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 Jesus Toaster, fresh
from the mind of Galen Dively III, 45, of Walden, Vermont. His$39.95
toaster - jesustoasters.com
- leaves an imprint of Jesus on every slice.
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- Dively says he was inspired by the image of the Virgin Mary
on a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich that sold on eBay for
$28,000 in 2004. It was purchased by an online casino.
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- New for 2011: The Magimix Vision Toaster, billed as the world's
first see-through toaster. Is it the best thing since sliced
bread? The jury is still out, but early inventors would be pleased
to know their inventions are still being tweaked almost a century
later.
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- No matter how you slice it, bread in its many sizes, shapes
and composition, is quite a story.
- Photos:
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- 1 - New look in toasters, a 2011 see-through update from
Magimix
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- 2 - First home toaster, an open-air D-12 model from 1909
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- 3 - Otto Frederick Rohwedder, the inventor of sliced break
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- 4 - Chillicothe, Missouri "Home of Sliced Bread"
logo
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- 5 - The Jesus Toaster, leaves an imprint of Jesus on every
slice
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