The name of this blog, Sinceslicedbread is an homage to the idiom “the greatest thing since sliced bread,” which refers to a particularly significant innovation. It is believed that phrase evolved from the a July 6, 1928, advertisement by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri, touting their new sliced bread as the “greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.”
By 1930, Wonderbread was selling sliced bread with a similar slogan, and the fanfare for sliced bread eventually resulted in the idiom “the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
Sliced bread itself owes its origin to Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa, who worked for many year to invent an automated bread slicer. Otto struggled to sell his invention until he solved the problem of the sliced bread quickly becoming stale, by wrapping the thinly sliced loaves in wax paper immediately after slicing. Chillicothe Baking Company was his first customer, and that machine is now in the Smithsonian.
Otto then applied for a patent and in 1932 received U.S. Patent No. 1,867,377.
Commedian Red Skelton is usually credited with the first published use of the phrase, telling a Maryland newspaper in 1952 that “television is the greatest thing since sliced bread.”