When did Otto Frederick Rohwedder invent sliced bread?

While he is credited with developing the first commercially viable bread-slicing machine in 1928, sliced bread itself had been around for decades prior.

The earliest known instance of sliced bread dates back to 1789, when a Scottish baker named John Darragh designed a wire frame for cutting bread into slices. However, this method was inefficient and didn't gain widespread popularity.

The credit for truly popularizing sliced bread goes to the Chillicothe Baking Company in Chillicothe, Missouri, in 1916. They were using a manual slicer to make sliced bread, but it was still a relatively new concept at the time.

Rohwedder's machine was a breakthrough because it was automatic and efficient, making it possible to mass-produce sliced bread. This, combined with the rise of the packaged loaf, led to sliced bread becoming the dominant form of bread consumption in the United States by the 1930s.