Ruth Wakefield,the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie, was a graduate from the Framingham State Normal School Department ofHousehold Arts in Framingham Massachusetts. Until she and her husband bought the Toll House Inn, in Whitman, Massachusetts, she worked as a dietitian and lectured on food. From here, the story is as follows:
Ruth and her husband Kenneth purchased and ran a lodge by the name of the Toll House Inn. Ruth's job at the inn was to prepare the meals and desserts to be served to the guests. One of her most (locally) famous treats was a kind of cookie that required baker's chocolate in its recipe. One day while making these cookies, Ruth realized she was out of baker's chocolate. So, she broke up a bar of semi-sweet chocolate into little bits and mixed it into the dough, hoping it would act like baker's chocolate and spread evenly throughout each cookie as they baked. As we know, that's not what happened. And thus, the chocolate chip cookie was invented...by accident!
After the initial invention, the cookies, which Ruth called Toll House Crunch Cookies, grew in populatiry. Eventually, the recipe was published in a Boston newspaper. Once it was out, the demand for Nestle's chocolate bars also spiked (since the bar Ruth used was given to her by her friend, Andrew Nestle). So Ruth and Andrew came up with an agreement: Nestle would begin selling 'chocolate chips', and on the bag he would print the Toll House cookie recipe. Plus, Ruth would have access to all the chocolate she needed.
A happy ending, right? I think Ruth got the better end of the deal here. A lifetime supply of free chocolate...yeah, that sounds pretty good to me. But I guess Nestle became a pretty famous brand, so that wasn't too bad there. Anyways, the chocolate chip cookie was definately one of the best inventions ever, though not especially useful.
Sources:
http://www.women-inventors.com/Ruth-Wakefield.asp
http://inventors.about.com/od/wstartinventors/a/Chocolate_Chip.htm
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