Okay, this is an odd trivia question, but the subject tickled me when I learned of it recently. We take toast for granted (I assume) and we take sliced bread as a commercial product for granted as well (I also assume).
So which came first, sliced bread (of the store-bought variety) or the electric toaster?
The toaster, people had the technology to slice their own bread, way before you could buy sliced. The first toasters where non-enclosed whereby you placed a slice of bread on a sloping grid that had the heating elements just under the grid - no timer, you had to watch it and turn it over to toast the other side.
The toaster.
Just Google it.
The History of Your Toaster
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By Mary Bellis
Toasting bread began as a method of prolonging the life of bread. It was very common activity in Roman times, 'tostum' is the latin word for scorching or burning. The first electric toaster was invented in 1893 in Great Britain by Crompton and Co (UK) and re-invented in 1909 in the United States. It only toasted one side of the bread at a time and it required a person to stand by and turn it off manually when the toast looked done. Charles Strite invented the modern timer, pop-up toaster in 1919.
Sliced Bread - Otto Frederick Rohwedder
Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented the bread slicer, which he started working on in 1912. At first, Rohwedder came up with the idea of a device that held the slices together with hat pins (not a success). In 1928, he designed a machine that sliced and wrapped the bread to prevent the sliced bread from going stale. Pre-sliced bread was popularized by Wonder Bread in 1930, helping to spread the toaster's popularity further.
Otto Rohwedder
1928 is credited as the year when the first bread slicing machine was sold.
General Electric Toaster
The electric toaster? It required nichrome wire for the heating elements. That wire was invented in 1905.
The first electric toaster was introduced by General Electric in 1905 per the GE company history. Later, in 1919, some smart guy figured out how to make the *pop-up* toaster, eh?
General Electric introduces the toaster in 1905
Funny that the commercial bread slicing machine lagged the invention of toaster by years, isn't it?
In many parts of the world, pre-sliced bread is sold labeled as "toast". Bread, by default, is otherwise sold unsliced.
We all now how good homemade bread tastes, but people also tend to want "the latest thing".
My grandmother told me that the bread she served was always homemade, but she said my grandfather told her "I don't want this, I want want store-bought bread."
Sheeeesh...
Get a bread machine and you'll never go back to store bought. I think I might actually enjoy the smell of the baking bread when it is close to being done more than eating the bread itself!
