The journey of the hot dog from a American diet began in 1852 Germany, when the
Frankfurt butchers' guild created a long, thin sausage and name it "frankfurter" in honor of their
town. Shortly after that, someone noticed that the new sausage looked like a dachshund
and started calling it a "dachshund sausage," after the long thin dog. The name stuck and soon
people were calling the frankfurter a dachshund sausage.
In 1906, Harry Mosley Stevens, who operated the New York Giant's ice cream and soda
concession, decided to add the dachshund sausage to his menu. Stevens realized the in
New York's cold spring afternoons the last thing anyone wanted was cold ice cream
and that the dachshund sausage, which would stay warm in its skin and warmer still
in a roll, was just the thing for his customers.
Stevens had his vendors hawk the sausage, instructing them to sell it by yelling, "They're
red hot. Get your dachshund sausages while theyr red hot."
While attending a game, Ted Dorgan, a leading cartoonist, saw the
popularity of Stevens's new food idea and decided to lampoon it in a cartoon. In the cartoon,
vendors were selling real dachshund dogs in a roll, yelling "Get your hot dogs!" at each
other. As a result, the name "Hot dog" caught on, and - after Stevens was able to convince
people that it wasn't made out of dog meat_the hot dog became a hit.l
