The History of the Potato Chip

In 1853 American Indian George Crum was a chef at a resort in Saratoga Springs, New York. As a chef he made French fried potatoes that he put on the menu at the high class resort. French fries had been made thickly sliced since the 1700's in France. Thomas Jefferson brought the idea for French fries from France to America.

A customer who ordered the thick style French fries from George Crum, complained on receiving his order that the fries were too thick. George cut the fries thinner, but this was still not good enough for his unhappy customer. Crum was angry at the customers attitude, and then decided to cut the fries so thin that they would be too crisp even to be picked up by a fork. The restaurant customer loved the thinly cut brown fries soon to be known as potato chips. Crums potato chips became very popular at the restaurant. They were named Saratoga Chips, and were soon packaged to be sold locally. It was not long before they were being sold in areas over New England as well. It wasn't until 1921 that the potato chip was distributed to England. It was re-named Crisps as the name chips was used in the US when referring to French fries.

The mechanical potato peeler was not invented until 1920. Up until this time all the potato's were peeled by hand. Herman Lay helped popularize the potato chip as he was a traveling salesman. He promoted the chips further south as they had been a Northern only popular snack before. He started off by selling the chips to Southern Grocer's out of the trunk of his car. Lay's potato chips were the first successful brand to be marketed. In 1961 Herman Lay merged his company with another popular snack food producer named Frito.

Mike-sell's Potato Chips Company is based in Ohio, and claims to be the oldest American potato chip company being formed in 1910. Before the chip bag was invented the potato chips were stored in barrels, or tins. Laura Scudder ironed two pieces of waxed paper together, thus the airtight bag was invented. When they were originally kept in the tins and barrels the chips at the bottom were found to be damp, and of no use. So, the invention of this bag was an ideal storage and packaging aid for chip companies.

In 1920 Frank Smith from the British Smiths Potato Crisp Company put a small package of salt inside the potato chip bags, to add a touch of seasoning to the plain chips. However, when Tayto started manufacturing chips with season already added Smith stopped putting the small packages of salt in the bags. Walkers took over Smiths company in 1979, and revived the old tradition of adding the salt package, they named the chips Salt and Shake. The owner of Tayto, an Irish based company made the first flavored chips in the 1950's The first flavors were Salt and Vinegar, and Cheese and Onion. The flavored chip became an overnight sensation with big American based companies going to try out the chips, and also gain rights to manufacture the flavored chip. Since that time there have been artificial as well as natural flavors added to the chips.