Was It That Great?

[244 words] We’ve all heard the phrase before, “the greatest thing since sliced bread,” but as it turns out this greatest thing didn’t start out so great. Otto Rohwedder invented the first bread slicing machine, built to slice bread by the loaf. His prototype and blueprints went up in smoke in a fire in 1917. For the next several years he perfected the design and by 1927 it worked perfectly. Except no one wanted it. A lot of bakers were skeptical, fearing the pre-sliced bread would fall apart and grow stale too fast. They didn’t think people would much care if their bread was sliced. In 1928 only one company had bought his device. Luckily for him and us, the marketing folks stepped in and began promoting the product. By 1933, American bakeries were selling more sliced than unsliced bread loaves. It wasn’t that the idea wasn’t sound, people just…