People eating sausages in buns outside Nathan's Famous fast food restaurant

“Even an innocent sausage box will be banned from...”

Charles Feltman, a German immigrant, sold clams from a cart on a Coney Island beach in New York City in the second half of the 1860s. In those years, the United States was recovering from the Civil War, and the railroad brought more and more vacationers to New Yorks beaches. Customers asked Feltman if he had hot food other than shellfish. Feltman, who loved grilled sausages, decided it was a great meal for a beach snack. He upgraded the cart by adding a sausage brazier and a metal box for heating buns. It is thanks to the bun that sausages can be eaten on the beach. This is how the famous hot dog came about.
This story was later challenged by entrepreneur Harry M. Stevens. He claimed that while working at New Yorks Polo Grounds in 1901, he was the one who came up with the idea of serving sausages in small French buns when he ran out of the wax paper he used.
Another German immigrant, Antoine Feuchtwanger, allegedly pioneered putting sausage into a bun in the American Midwest. While selling sausages at the 1893 Columbus Worlds Fair in Chicago, Feuchtwanger gave his customers white gloves so they could borrow sausages without burning their hands and lost money when some customers left gloves as a keepsake. After that, Feuchtwangers wife offered to serve sausages in a loaf.

And a few words about the etymology of the name “Hot Dog” (translated from English as “hot dog”). The word “dog” has been used synonymously with sausage since the 1800s, possibly due to accusations of using dog meat in the manufacture of products. Sometimes suspicions were justified - in 19th century Germany, eating dog meat was common in Saxony, Silesia, Anhalt and Bavaria... In addition, Germans called long Frankfurt sausages “dachshunds”.
The first use of the term “hot dog” for sausages appeared in the Evansville Daily Courier (Indiana) on September 14, 1884: “Even an innocent sausage boy will be banned from selling hot dogs on a street corner...” Newspaper cartoonist Tad Dorgan later used the phrase “hot dog” to refer to a sausage around 1900 in a cartoon showing sausage being sold during the New York Giants baseball game at Polo Grounds in New York City. Although it is believed that Dorgan used the phrase “Hot Dog” because he did not know how to spell the word “dachshund”, and drafts of these works were never found. Dorgans cartoons were published in The New York Evening Journal in 1906.

A photo shows people eating sausages in buns outside Nathans Famous fast food restaurant, New York, August 1947. One of the signs on the window is a hot Frankfurter - 10 cents. The word “frankfurter” comes from the name of the city of Frankfurt am Main in Germany, where pork sausages originated. The name “hot dog” was not yet widely used in 1947.

Previously on Old Photos: Coca and Cola, A Hopeless Enterprise.