How the Tea Bag Was Invented

Sullivan worked as a tea importer in New York when he (supposedly) accidentally invented tea bags in 1908. The story goes that Sullivan began sending small silk bags containing samples of the various forms of tea he sold to his customers as a way of encouraging sales.

The “accident” part is that a number of those people who he sent the bags of tea to decided to use the bag as something of a tea infuser, rather than opening the bags up and brewing the tea normally. As with Lawson and Molaren’s aforementioned invention, this allowed a person to make a single cup of tea, rather than an entire pot, and made for much more convenient clean up- when done, simply toss the bag. No need to clean out all the tea leaves from the pot and strainer or infuser.

The little marketing campaign worked and orders started rolling in, which Sullivan initially filled via standard containers of loose-leaf tea. Customers who had used the bags as infusers complained and Sullivan soon began offering his tea once again in bags.

However, silk bags weren’t ideal for steeping standard loose-leaf tea, due to being a little too fine and expensive for single serve. He, thus, replaced the silk of the original sample bags with gauze and then further tweaked things for better steeping by filling the tea bags with fannings, the broken tea stalks, and tea dust leftover from processing the tea. Sullivan then began heavily marketing his little innovation and the tea bag was on its way to becoming a household staple.