World War II restrictions cut deep into every American pantry as
federal officials announced that sliced bread would be rationed
on this day in history, Jan. 18, 1943.

"I should like to let you know how important sliced bread is to
the morale and saneness of a household," distraught mother
Sue Forrester of Fairfield, Connecticut, claiming to speak on
behalf of America’s housewives, lamented in a New York Times
letter to the editor.

Wartime rationing had already caused severe restrictions on
the nation’s household food supply. 

Basic resources were devoted in ever-growing volume to the
war effort in 1943, as the tide of battle turned and the U.S. and
its Allies went on the offensive across the vast expanse of two
oceans.

Bread rationing marked the depths of sacrifices on the home
front. 

Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa invented the
first single loaf bread-slicing machine. A prototype he built
in 1912 was destroyed in a fire, and it was not until 1928
that Rohwedder had a fully working machine ready. The
first commercial use of the machine was by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri, who sold their
first slices on July 7, 1928.

By 1933, around 80% of bread sold in the US was pre-sliced,
leading to the popular idiom "greatest thing since sliced
bread"

Otto Frederick Rohwedder
(July 7, 1880 – November 8, 1960)

This photograph depicts a "new electrical bread
slicing machine" in use by an unnamed bakery
in St. Louis in 1930.

Thomas Edison announced his invention of the phonograph
in 1877.       

Edison stumbled on one of his great inventions—the phonograph—
while working on a way to record telephone communication at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. His work led him to
experiment with a stylus on a tinfoil cylinder, which, to his
surprise, played back the short song he had recorded, “MARY
HAD A LITTLE LAMB”. Public demonstrations of the phonograph
made the Yankee inventor world famous, and he was dubbed the
“Wizard of Menlo Park.”

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931)

James Robert Cade
(September 26, 1927 – November 27, 2007)

On October 2, 1965, a team of scientists invented Gatorade, a
sports drink to quench thirst, in a University of Florida lab. The
name "Gatorade" is derived from the nickname of the university’s
sports teams. Eventually, the drink becomes a phenomenon and
makes its inventors wealthy.

Early in the summer of 1965, University of Florida assistant football coach Dewayne Douglas met a group of scientists on campus to determine why many of Florida’s players were so negatively
affected by heat. To replace bodily fluids lost during physical
exertion, Dr. James Robert Cade and his team of researchers
created the sports drink.

Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen
(7 April 1891 – 11 March 1958)

In 1932, Ole founded the construction toy company The Lego
Group. He toiled away in Billund, Denmark, for decades before
creating Leg Godt, which means “play well.” His workshop was destroyed by fire twice. He endured bankruptcy and a world war
that caused a shortage of materials.

Finally, in the late 1940s, Ole Christiansen landed on the idea for
self-locking plastic bricks. By the time Ole Kirk died in 1958,
Legos was on the verge of becoming a household word.

On September 2, 1969, America’s first automatic teller
machine (ATM) makes its public debut, dispensing
cash to customers at Chemical Bank in Rockville
Centre, New York. ATMs went on to revolutionize the
banking industry, eliminating the need to visit a bank
to conduct basic financial transactions.  

By the 1980s, these money machines had become
widely popular and handled many of the functions
previously performed by human tellers, such as
check deposits and  money transfers between
accounts. 

Today, ATMs are as indispensable to most people
as cell phones and e-mail.

Donald C. Wetzel (93) is an American businessman known
for holding the USA patent to the automatic teller machine.