Who invented the tea bag and why?
The history of the tea bag is as fascinating as it is, in some ways, unexpected. When did it originate and who invented this handy little bag for the preparation of our favorite beverage? Two theses are the most popular. Let’s find out together…
Roberta and Mary’s patent
The first thesis attributes the invention of the teabag to two Wisconsin Americans, Roberta C. Lawson and Mary Molaren. These Milwaukee women were the first to file a patent application for the invention of the tea bag on August 26, 1901. The application was not officially approved until two years later, on March 24, 1903.
According to the description, it was a container capable of holding enough leaves to make one cup of tea, thus avoiding waste. An all-female intuition!
You can see a picture of it and the patent at this link: https://patents.google.com/patent/US723287
Thomas Sullivan’s Tea Bag
According to most credited lore, it was a tea and coffee merchant, New Yorker Thomas Sullivan, who accidentally created the tea bag in the early 1900s.
In fact, at that time he began sending his customers tea samples enclosed in silk, hand-sewn sachets. According to Sullivan, they were supposed to be simple gadgets, but those who received these bundles, without any directions on how to use them, well thought of dipping them directly into hot water, thus creating a new and unintentional way of preparing tea!
From Silk to Paper
Initially, it was, as we said, a silk wrapper. Later, around the 1920s, they opted for a more porous material and then switched to gauze, a fabric that allowed easier and more intense brewing. Then it was switched to paper.
The product was further perfected by another American, William Hermanson: in 1930 he patented heat-sealed sachets. Even at that time, the tea bag had a string at one end to make it easier to dip so that it could be removed at the right time and with ease.
Soon it was also thought to optimize its packaging, so that in 1929 in Germany the first machine to pack tea bags was invented by engineer Adolf Rambold for the German company Teekanne GmbH. It was called the Constanta. Initially, it consisted of double-chambered paper tea bags held together with glue. As Jane Pettigrew and Bruce Richardson recount in their book A Social History of Tea, consumers disliked this method because the presence of the glue affected the taste of the tea. So, in the 1940s, the German company began to develop and then produce a new product without glues or staples.