Iowa native Otto Frederick Rohwedder was not looking to spawn a commercial slogan that would catch on as statement on quality on just about everything. His background was actually in opthamology, in which he got his degree, and in jewelry sales, which he started after finishing school — hardly the description of a brilliant marketer. But when he sold his stores and moved to produce his brilliant idea, it was to produce something at the time unheard of: sliced bread.

On this day, July 7, in 1928, the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri, sold the Kleen Maid Sliced Bread produced by Rohwedder’s slicing machine. He took the better part of 16 years to take his invention from conception to demonstration, overcoming along the way a fire in 1917 that destroyed his only working prototype.

Sliced bread quickly grew popular, particularly as the invention of toasters had increased the demand for finely-cut bread. During the Great Depression. Rhwedder had to sell the patent to his invention, but sliced bread was continuing on the upward trend, except for a several months-long government ban in the winter in 1943, towards ubiquity.