6 Inventions That Came from the Great Depression
Hard times call for quick thinking.
The Great Depression was full of hardships for many people, from rich to poor. It was a time of stretching every penny, of repairing and working out how to get every last use from your “stuff”, and it was also a time of innovation. As it turns out the economic pressure that drove women to get creative in the home was also driving inventors, bakers, businessmen, and entrepreneurs of all types towards being more creative with their products as well. Here are 6 inventions we’re thankful for that came out of the Great Depression.
6) Twinkies
A baker named Jimmy Alexander Dewar at the Continental Baking Co. in 1930 had the idea to use a machine used exclusively for strawberry filling to make cream-filled cakes when strawberries were not in season. Back then hothouse fruits and veggies were simply not available all year like they are today and the seasonality of the berries left a gap when the machine wasn’t being used at all.
Dewar filled the yellow spongecakes with a banana cream. During World War II bananas were scarce and so a vanilla version of the cream was used instead which ultimately proved to be far more popular.
5) Nylon Toothbrush Bristles
Plastics in the earlier part of the 20th century were in their infancy and some of them relied on unsuitable materials (like the asbestos used in some Bakelite products) or had unstable chemistry (like the highly combustable celluloid). But, the newly-discovered nylon was stable and could be made into a wide variety of products.
It was first used for Dr. West’s (Weco’s) toothbrush bristles in 1938, but when the license to use Dupont’s nylon expired a host of other companies jumped on the bandwagon. By the 1950s nylon bristles were ubiquitous for nearly every brand of toothbrush makers. The technology to make spun nylon into stockings was also an invention of the 1930s by American company DuPont and they were seen as a more patriotic alternative to imported Japanese silk stockings.
4) Scotch Tape
This clear tape today is in just about every home and every office, not mention schools. But, there was a time when this was a brand new invention. In the 1920s 3M employee Richard Drew began working on making masking tape for the auto industry. When cellophane bags were gaining popularity a few years later he set himself to create a clear tape to seal the cellophane with, something that proved harder than at first expected since many adhesives at the time were yellowish or tinted lightly amber or brown.
One of his early prototypes used adhesive only along the edges, prompting a customer to accuse the company of being “Scotch” ie a derogatory term meaning cheap. And that’s the story on how it was named. The appeal of being able to repair things was not lost on those who lived through the Great Depression, making this luxury tape a staple long after the financial crisis had passed.
3) Toll House Cookies
The famous cookie we know and love today got its start in 1933 when Toll House Inn restaurant owner Ruth Wakefield invented this cookie as an accompaniment to ice cream. Wakefield was renowned for her comfort food and collected recipes to feed hungry travelers on the road as vacations by car had become more popular. She reportedly invented her “chocolate crunch cookie” by chopping up a NestlĂ© chocolate bar.
The cookies proved so popular that by 1939 Nestlé purchased the rights to the recipe and went on to develop chocolate chip morsels to make these cookies special. They also printed her recipe on the bags of the chocolate chips, cementing this Great Depression cookie into permanent popularity.
2) Car Radios
Just as portable radios were taking off in the late 1920s the public had to pull back on their spending due to the Stockmarket Crash of 1929. In order to save his young radio business, co-founder Paul Gavin had the idea to begin placing radios in cars. Auto sales had not slumped due to the Depression as people needed cars to get around, so this was a win win situation.
They named the radio Motorola, and soon named their company after these radios as well.
1) Sliced Bread
We all know the saying “greatest thing since sliced bread” but there was a time when bread only came in loaves. The bread slicing mechanism that allowed bakeries to cut even, relatively-thin slices in bread was invented in 1928 by Otto Rohwedder and took off when Wonderbread began using a similar device. Soon other companies were using it as well, leading to a craze for sliced bread for sandwiches. No longer was a bread knife and cutting board required to get a slice of bread. And, these pre-sliced pieces were even, unlike when one slices bread by hand.
It’s hard to imagine sandwiches without sliced bread- a fact we take for granted. But, no doubt some folks saw this new sliced bread as an economical choice since every piece was ensured to be the same.
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