After observe loaf after loaf of bread of day - erstwhile bread get toss in the tripe , a 19th - 100 Boston restaurant owner name Joseph Lee came up with a way to give those slightly dusty sugar a second life : He ’d flex them into kale crumbs .
His bread - crumb automobile , patentedon June 4 , 1895 , comprised an oblong , candid alloy container with rows of hole along the bottom . When you placed your hardened loaf of bread on top and turned the churl bind to the container , the sugar would be pull through a set of cog , which would tear it into tiny pieces . Anything too large to fall through the hollow would mechanically be carried back up to the top for another trip through the cog .
According tothe National Inventors Hall of Fame — where Lee was inducted in 2019 — it only took about five year for many major hotels and catering establishments to have one of Lee ’s car in their kitchens , write out down on food waste and helping breadcrumb contend with cracker crumbs as the go - to element for fried and battered dishes of all form .
The achiever of Lee ’s bread - crumber might ’ve been unsurprising to anyone who knew him . Not only was Lee a skilled baker himself , he had also spend most of his life in the cordial reception industry . Born to enslave parent in South Carolina in 1849 , he first worked in a Beaufort household , and eventually secured a task as a keeper in the U.S. Coast Survey . fit in toThe Black Inventor Online Museum , he finish up in Massachusetts , where he launch a numeral of business ventures , admit two restaurants , a catering company , and possession of the Woodland Park Hotel .
The crumb machine was n’t Lee ’s first share to the bread industry , nor would it be his last . The previous year , he had patented a machine that evenly kneaded moolah dough to raise uniform loaves , aninventionhe adjusted in 1902 so it more closely mimicked kneading by script .
The famed discoverer — and savvy businessman — betray the right to both machine and continued to profit off his work until his death in 1908 .
