The Potato chips were invented in the year 1853 by George Crum who was a chef at the Moon Lake Lodge resort in Saratoga Springs, New York, USA.
One day a fussy diner in a restaurant sent his meal back because the french-fried potatoes were too thick and soggy. The chef became angry, and decided to make the thinnest fried potatoes the diner had ever seen.
He sliced a potato into paper-thin slivers, fried the pieces in boiling fat, and sent the golden chips back to the complaining customer. The customer loved them!
“Saratoga potato chips” became a popular item on the restaurant’s menu. Thus, potato chips were actually invented by mistake! They were soon packaged and sold in New England – Crum later opened his own restaurant.
William Tappendon manufactured and marketed the chips in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1895. In the 1920’s, the salesman Herman Lay sold potato chips to the southern USA (selling the chips from the trunk of his car).
In 1926, Laura Scudder (who owned a potato chip factory in Monterey Park, California) invented a wax paper potato chip bag to keep the chips fresh and crunchy – this made potato chips even more popular.
During the 20th century, potato chips spread beyond chef-cooked restaurant fare and began to be mass-produced for home consumption. The Dayton, Ohio-based Mikesell’s Potato Chip Company, founded in 1910, identifies as the “oldest potato chip company in the United States”.
New England-based Tri-Sum Potato Chips, founded in 1908 as the Leominster Potato Chip Company, in Leominster, Massachusetts, claims to be America’s first potato chip manufacturer.
Content for this question contributed by Ruben Salvatierra, resident of Saratoga Springs, New York, USA
