Space flight versus sliced bread

Go on, admit it! You’ve used the phrase yourself. I certainly have, many times. When faced with an innovative but cunningly simple solution to an everyday problem I’ve exclaimed that it is the ‘best thing since sliced bread’. Not better; notice, but the best since… The inference here is clear. There is a firm belief that sliced bread is the most important development in mankind’s history (or at least since the development of sliced bread).

It follows that the machine which gave the world its yardstick has to be the greatest invention ever. It is with this in mind that I would like to nominate the bread slicing machine as the most important patented invention of all time. Designed by Otto Frederick Rohwedder, its US patent number is 1 867 377. This was issued on July 12th 1932. The first sliced bread went on sale on July 7th 1928 in Chillecothe, Missouri, and history was made.

As a teenager in the sixties, I sat entranced along with millions of others, as Neil Armstrong took man’s first historic steps on the moon. Later I was on the edge of my seat watching the efforts to bring Apollo 13 back to earth. Space flight – now that’s the best thing since sliced bread!

Submitted by: Pat Blanchard