In the early 1890s, lawyer Henry Perky was suffering from digestive issues at a Nebraska hotel when he encountered another guest with similar problems. The man was eating boiled wheat with cream. That chance meeting would spark an invention that transformed American breakfast habits forever.

Perky took his idea to machinist William H. Ford in Watertown, New York. Together, they developed a machine that could shred cooked wheat into what Perky called "little whole wheat mattresses." The process involved flattening boiled wheat between steel rollers, then shredding and forming the strands into pillow-shaped biscuits.

The Wonder of the Ages

On August 1, 1893, Perky and Ford secured their patent. That same year, they unveiled Shredded Wheat to the public at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. The cereal was marketed as a health food and a "wonder of the ages" — part of the late 19th-century obsession with digestive wellness.

What made Shredded Wheat revolutionary wasn't just the product, but the timing. While it wasn't technically the first breakfast cereal (that honor goes to James Caleb Jackson's rock-hard Granula from 1863, which had to be soaked overnight), Shredded Wheat was among the first truly convenient ready-to-eat options.

From Patent to Empire

Perky established The Natural Food Company and began mass production in Niagara Falls, New York, in 1901. He became a pioneer of what he called the "cookless breakfast food" — cereal that required no preparation beyond pouring milk.

The legacy of that hotel conversation lives on. Shredded Wheat is one of the oldest breakfast cereals still on shelves today, outlasting countless competitors from the cereal boom of the early 1900s. Not bad for an idea born from a bout of diarrhea.

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