The Tea Bag Is 100 Years Old This Month

Thanks to our source today for the history lesson about the tea bag, its origins and its modifications through time. The blog even puts the tea bag as the reason tea is so very popular in Great Britain today.

In an attempt to cut costs and provide only samples of tea to prospective American customers, the Englishman and tea merchant Thomas Sullivan sent out tea in small silk purses. Not really knowing what to do with them, the Americans just dunked them into cups of hot water. Sullivan received complaints that the silk was too fine and so he created gauze tea bags. There you go – tea bags.

However, it took the Tetley tea company to spot the real potential of the tea bags as a commercial enterprise in 1953. Not until 1964, however, was a finely perforated bag developed that didn’t “taint” the tea. With this development, tea bags really started flying off the shelves.

Today we have tea bags in all different types of shapes. We have round ones which apparently Tetley came out with in 1989. We have drawstring bags and pyramid bags, too. Lipton even has their flow through tea bags.

As the blog post points out, given the big surge toward time saving devices in the last century, perhaps the tea bag did save the tea industry. Who had time to make a cup of tea the old fashioned way?

Source: Happy birthday to the 100 year old tea bag