Toilet paper and remote control: 25 things that were invented in New York

New York City is home to many brilliant minds - comedians, writers, artists and other talented people. Also, this metropolis has spawned many great creations of the world. The details were shared by the edition Time-out.

1. Toilet paper

In 1857, New York businessman Joseph Gayetti issued toilet paper, cut into neat squares and packaged in bundles. He began selling it in his store at 41 Ann St. The paper was made from hemp and processed with aloe.

2. Waffles with chicken

In 1938, the Wells Supper Club jazz club was opened in Harlem. Great jazz artists such as Sammy Davis Jr., Gladys Knight and Nat King Cole began to visit this place. Wells then created the perfect dish for those who skipped dinner but couldn't wait for breakfast: a fried chicken served on a sweet waffle.

3. Pneumatic train

In 1868, Alfred Beach proposed a design for a pneumatic train (and, technically, the first subway) in New York. The inventor suggested transporting people through a tunnel resembling a “wooden pipe” in a carriage similar to a tube.

4. Waldorf salad

Waldorf salad, or "Waldorf" salad - a classic American salad of sweet and sour apples, cut into thin strips, stalks or celery root and walnuts. It was first filed in 1896.

5. Teddy bears

In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot an injured black bear while hunting. Inspired by this story, Morris and Rose Michtoms, the owners of a candy store in Brooklyn, made a teddy bear, calling it teddy's bear. The toy was so popular that they stopped selling candy and opened a toy factory.

6. Cocktail "Tom Collins"

According to one of the legends, the Tom Collins cocktail appeared in 1876 in the state of Pennsylvania. Collins's name was by that time used as a name. It has been around for several years. They told jokes about Tom, joked and referred to him. The joke spread throughout North America, even in newspapers and on television, the notorious Tom Collins was often recalled.

Therefore, no one was surprised at the emerging cocktail with the already boring name "Tom Collins". New York mixologist Jerry Thomas created the recipe in 1876. And in 1978, not a single bar could do without the Tom Collins cocktail.

7. Charcoal pizza

The pizza was cooked on wood, until Gennaro Lombardi began to cook it on charcoal. Legend has it that he served the first charcoal pie in 1905. Since then, pizza has been technically prohibited in this way, but the ovens of several selected establishments throughout the city have been patented, including Lombardi's, Totono's and Patsy's.

8. Scrabble

Scrubble is a classic board game that requires words to be composed using chip letters. It was invented in 1931 by the architect Alfred Mosher Butts, a resident of Jackson Heights, Queens.

9. Spaghetti "Primavera"

When this Italian dish was served at Le Cirque in 1977, it was, according to The New York Times, "the most talked about dish in Manhattan." Le Cirque chef Jean Vergne claims that he invented this dish together with former chef Jean Louis Todeschini.

10. Remote control

Nikola Tesla came up with a radio-controlled boat back in 1898. The idea was so new that no one believed that such a technology could exist.

11. Sweet'n Low

An entrepreneur from Fort Green, Benjamin Eisenstadt, together with his son, a chemist, figured out how to create saccharin in powder form (previously it could only be a liquid or a tablet). This is how Sweet'n Low was born, a brand of artificial sweetener made primarily from granulated saccharin.

12. Eggs Benedict

In 1894, broker Lemuel Benedict visited the Waldorf Astoria hotel, where he ordered "toasts with butter, boiled eggs, bacon and Dutch sauce." Oscar Chirki, the head waiter of the restaurant, was so impressed with the dish that he added it to the hotel menu.

13. Bloody Mary

Bartender Fernand Petio lived and worked in Paris, but in 1933 he moved to New York, where he began working at the King Call Bar of the Sant Rangers hotel in Manhattan.

On the subject: 13 curious and little-known facts about New York

Here he blended a tomato cocktail for Serge Obolensky, the hotel manager. The cocktail was attended by vodka and tomato juice. Serge at first did not appreciate the cocktail, and then Pete added lemon juice, spices and sauce. The hotel owner, Vincent Astor, did not like the name, and the cocktail was renamed Red Snapper, and vodka was replaced with gin (due to the lack of vodka in the US market). But visitors stubbornly continued to book Bloody Mary.

14. Credit cards

Most historians believe the inventor of credit cards is John Biggins, an employee of New York's Flatbush National Bank. It was he who, in 1946, created the fee-it program, which issued bank credit cards to customers for use in local Brooklyn retail outlets.

15. Dessert "Baked Alaska"

In 1876, pastry chefs at the Delmonico restaurant in Manhattan invented a dessert. They baked a hot sponge cake topped with crispy meringue and filled with ice cream, naming this miracle of food science after the country's newest land. Recall that in 1884 Alaska received the status of a district, in 1912 it was officially declared a territory of the United States, and in 1959 - the 49th state.

16. Chicken of General Tso

This is a fried chicken dish served at restaurants in North America. It is named after Zuo Zongtang, a statesman and commander of the Qing Dynasty, although no contact was registered with him, and the dish is not known in Hunan Province, Zuo's native province.

In fact, it was like this: during his exile to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War, Chef Peng Chang-Kuei created a spicy and sour chicken dish in honor of the famous Hunan general. In the 1970s, he stepped off the ship in New York, where he opened a restaurant. This dish became a hit after Peng added sugar to the recipe.

17. Frozen hot chocolate

Stephen Bruce, co-founder of the Serendipity 3 East Side cult restaurant, has kept the recipe for this decadent dessert a secret for 40 years. He recently said that the famous frozen treat is 14 kinds of cocoa mixed with crushed ice cream and topped with whipped cream. Species of cocoa are still a mystery.

18. Air conditioning

In 1902, Willis Carrier created his “air handling unit” to prevent paper from deforming at the Grand Street printing plant in Bushwick. The rescue of workers from the scorching summer heat was just a fortunate combination of circumstances.

19. Ruben's sandwich

There are many legends around the origin of Ruben's sandwich. The only thing true is that they invented it in America and it was named after the name of the one who invented it. Many say that Arnold Ruben, the owner of Reuben's Delicatessen store, invented this dish in 1914.

20 Potato Head

Mr. Potato Head is an American toy in the form of a plastic potato model, which can be decorated with various plastic parts that are attached to the main body. The toy was invented and developed by George Lerner in 1949 and first manufactured and distributed in 1952 by Hasbro, who bought the idea from its creator.

21. Hot Dog

The ingenious idea of ​​serving hot sausages in a bun of 10 cents each first appeared at Coney Island baker Charles Feltman. His business was quite successful until a former Nathan Handwerker employee opened Nathan's Famous and started selling hot dogs at 5 cents.

22. ATMs

The first money distribution device was invented in 1939 by Luther George Simgian. He convinced the City Bank of New York to test his invention. After that, the bank refused to use the device, because "the only ones who used the devices were a small number of prostitutes and gamblers."

23. Cronut

Cronut is a croissant and donut cookie invented by New York pastry chef Dominique Ansel of Dominique Ansel Bakery. The dough resembles a donut and is made of dough filled with fragrant cream and fried in grape seed oil. The confectionery, which debuted in May 2013, is still popular today.

24. Children's museums

The Brooklyn Children's Museum, located on Crown Heights, was opened in 1899 and became the country's first museum dedicated to the education of children. It was also here that the hands-on policy for exhibits was first introduced.

25. Hip Hop

East Coast hip hop, also known as East Coast rap, is a genre of hip-hop music that emerged and developed in New York in the mid-1970s. East Coast hip-hop is noted as the first form of hip-hop. Since then, this style has evolved into the main subgenre of hip-hop, having played an important role in its history.