document_title: History of the hamburger

question_text: where did the hamburger make its international debut

text: History of the hamburger

text: Beginning[edit]

text: Prior to the disputed invention of the hamburger in the United States, similar foods already existed in the culinary tradition of Europe. The Apicius cookbook, a collection of ancient Roman recipes that may date to the early 4th century, details a preparation of beef called isicia omentata; served as a baked patty in which beef is mixed with pine kernels, black and green peppercorns, and white wine, isicia omentata may be the earliest precursor to the hamburger.[11] In the 12th century, the nomadic Mongols carried food made of several varieties of milk (kumis) and meat (horse or camel).[12] During the life of their leader Genghis Khan (1167–1227), the Mongol army occupied the western portions of the modern-day nations of Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan,[13] forming the so-called Golden Horde. This cavalry dominated army was fast moving and sometimes unable to stop for a meal, so they often ate while riding. They wrapped a few slices of meat under their saddles so it would crumble under pressure and motion and be cooked by heat and friction. This recipe for minced meat spread throughout the Mongol Empire until its split in the 1240s.[14] It was common for Mongol armies to follow different groups of animals (such as herds of horses or oxen or flocks of sheep) that provided the necessary protein for the warriors' diets.[12] Marco Polo also recorded descriptions of the culinary customs of the Mongol warriors, indicating that the flesh of a single pony could provide one day's sustenance for 100 warriors.

text: When Genghis Khan's grandson Kublai Khan (1215–1294) invaded Moscow, he and his warriors introduced minced horsemeat to the Muscovites. This was later called steak tartare.[12] The city states of what is now Germany took to this ground meat product and created many of their own dishes by adding capers, onions and even caviar to the blend and selling it on the streets.[15] It is not known when the first restaurant recipe for steak tartare appeared.[16] While not providing a clear name, the first description of steak tartare was given by Jules Verne in 1875 in his novel Michael Strogoff. There are certain similarities between steak tartare and the German dishes Labskaus and Mett. Other similar raw, chopped meats appeared in the 20th century, such as the Italian carpaccio, which itself was invented in 1930 at Harry's Bar in Venice.[17] Similarly, one of the oldest references to a Hamburgh Sausage appeared in 1763 in the cookbook entitled Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse (1708–1770). Hamburgh Sausage is made with minced meat and a variety of spices, including nutmeg, cloves, black pepper, garlic, and salt, and is typically served with toast. A wide variety of traditional European dishes are also made with minced meat, such as meatloaf,[18] the Serbian pljeskavica, the Arab kofta, and meatballs.

text: While ground beef was used by various cultures in Europe and Central Asia, the hamburger's other vital ingredient, bread, has a different history. Bread had always been part of the development of many types of foods, including sauces, such as those described by Marie-Antoine Carême in his compendium entitled L'art de la cuisine française au XIXe siècle. The word sandwich was not recorded until the 18th century. Many cultures claim invention of the sandwich, but it was given its name around the year 1765 in honor of the English aristocrat John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who preferred to eat sandwiches so he could play cards without soiling his fingers.[19] However, it was not until 1840 when Elizabeth Leslie Cook included a sandwich recipe in her cookbook that it appeared in the local cuisine of the United States.[20]

text: Hamburg and its port[edit]

text: Minced meat was a delicacy in medieval cuisine, red meat usually being restricted to the higher classes.[21] Very little mincing was done by medieval butchers or recorded in the cookbooks of the time, perhaps because it was not part of the sausage-making process that preserve meat. Russian ships brought recipes for steak tartare to the port of Hamburg during the 17th century,[22] a time when there was such a great presence of Russian residents there that it was nicknamed "the Russian port." Trade within the Hanseatic League between the 13th and 17th centuries made this port one of the largest in Europe, its commercial importance being further heightened as it became vital to early transatlantic voyages during the age of steam. In the period of European colonization of the Americas, immigrants to this port were a "bridge" between old European recipes and the future development of the hamburger in the United States.[23]

text: During the first half of the 19th century, most of the northern European emigrants who traveled to the New World embarked on their transatlantic voyages from Hamburg. The German shipping company Hamburg America Line, also known as the Hamburg Amerikanische Packetfahrt Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG), was involved in Atlantic transport for almost a century.[24] The company began operations in 1847 and employed many German immigrants, many of them fleeing the revolutions of 1848–9. The vast majority of settlers and emigrants from various parts of northern Europe also began their voyages to the United States from Hamburg, introducing their culinary customs to their host country.[24] New York City was the most common destination for ships traveling from Hamburg, and various restaurants in the city began offering the Hamburg-style steak in order to attract German sailors. The steak frequently appeared on the menu as a Hamburg-style American fillet,[25][26] or even beefsteak à Hambourgeoise. Early American preparations of minced beef were therefore made to fit the tastes of European immigrants, evoking memories of the port of Hamburg and the world they left behind.[24]

text: Hamburg steak[edit]

text: In the late 19th century, the Hamburg steak became popular on the menus of many restaurants in the port of New York. This kind of fillet was beef minced by hand, lightly salted and often smoked, and usually served raw in a dish along with onions and bread crumbs.[27][28] The oldest document that refers to the Hamburg steak is a Delmonico's Restaurant menu from 1873 which offered customers an 11-cent plate of Hamburg steak that had been developed by American chef Charles Ranhofer (1836–1899). This price was high for the time, twice the price of a simple fillet of beef steak.[26][29] However, by the end of the century the Hamburg steak was gaining popularity because of its ease of preparation decreasing cost. This is evident from its detailed description in some of the most popular cookbooks of the day.[18] Documents show that this preparation style was used by 1887 in some U.S. restaurants and was also used for feeding patients in hospitals; the Hamburg steak was served raw or lightly cooked and was accompanied by a raw egg.[30]

text: The menus of many American restaurants during the 19th century included a Hamburg beefsteak that was often sold for breakfast.[31] A variant of Hamburg steak is the Salisbury steak, which is usually served with a gravy similar in texture to brown sauce. Invented by Dr. James Salisbury (1823–1905), the term Salisbury steak has been used in the United States since 1897.[32] Nowadays, in the city of Hamburg as well as in parts of northern Germany, this type dish is called Frikadelle, Frikandelle, or Bulette, which is similar to the meatball. The term hamburger steak was replaced by hamburger by 1930, which has in turn been somewhat displaced by the simpler term, burger.[33] The latter term is now commonly used as a suffix to create new words for different variants of the hamburger, including cheeseburger, porkburger, baconburger and mooseburger. There are other foods with names derived from German cities that are shortened in different ways in American English. An example is the frankfurter, often abbreviated as frank.[33]

text: Invention[edit]

text: Many recipes and dishes traveled along with transatlantic immigrants to their destinations in the New World. Some authors question whether the Hamburg America Line was part of this, arguing that the hamburger was created to meet needs that arose amongst immigrants already in the New World.[26][34] Others, however, support the thesis that the Hamburg America Line brought the first Hamburger steaks from Europe to the Americas.[28][35] The hamburger as it is known today has multiple invention claims ranging between 1885 and 1904, but it is clearly the product of the early 20th century.[8] During the following 100 years, the hamburger spread throughout the world as a result of the emerging concept of fast food and a new business model: the franchise.

text: North America[edit]

text: The industrial use of mechanical meat shredding was the technical advance that helped popularize the Hamburg steak. The first meat grinder was invented in the early 19th century by the German engineer Karl Drais. The machine made it possible for minced meat to be sold at market in large quantities at reasonable prices. By 1845, numerous patents existed for improved meat grinders in the United States.[36][37] These machines could all shred meat to sizes before unimaginable. Before this, minced meat was prepared by hand at home using specialized chisels, intensive manual labor that severely limited the amount that could be produced.[38] It is very likely that the invention of the meat grinder contributed directly to the popularization of Hamburg steak, while the steak gradually became distant from its German roots in the minds of many Americans.[26] Minced meat also came to be used in other popular American foods, including hot dogs and meatloaf.[38]

text: Another development facilitating the invention and popularization of the proto-hamburger was the increased production of beef through livestock intensification. By the late 19th century, an increasing amount of land was being devoted to cattle and a growing number of people being employed as cowboys, resulting in the United States becoming one of the world's largest producers and consumers of beef.[23] The 1880s were declared The Golden Age of Beef, during which the abundance of rural beef production made vital its transportation by rail from agricultural to urban areas. This gave rise to various methods of meat preservation for making possible the consumption of fresh meat in urban and industrialized areas, among the refrigerator cars and different methods of packaging meat (such as corned beef), which were promoted by industrialists like Gustavus Swift (1839–1903). Around this time, the city of Chicago, along with other cities on the East Coast, became a focal point for the large-scale processing of beef. Beef was already inexpensive at that time, and it was available to the working class. This put the Hamburg steak within reach of the vast majority of the population, giving rise to what some authors jokingly call the "American beef dream".[26] In this era, the number of steakhouses that specialized in serving steaks increased markedly; some restaurants even served steak along with seafood, in a dish known as Surf and turf.

text: The high production and consumption of beef cattle in the United States made the meat industry increasingly powerful by the end of the 19th century.[38] Corruption problems soon arose in the meat industry, problems that endangered both quality and hygiene. At the beginning of the 20th century, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a novel about conspiracies and corruption in the American meat industry, intended as a veiled criticism of the industry itself. The book raised popular awareness about the safety of meat processing and helped lead to the creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act, which was sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration. The Jungle was a milestone in the subsequent history of the hamburger, as it led the American public to force restaurant chains to prove the safety of their cooked meat.[26] In 1933, Arthur Kallett published a similar book, entitled 100 million guinea pigs; Dangers in Everyday foods, drugs, and cosmetics, which warned consumers specifically about the content preservatives in hamburgers.

text: Controversial origins[edit]

text: The exact origin of the hamburger may never be known with any certainty. Most historians believe that it was invented by a cook who placed a Hamburg steak between two slices of bread in a small town in Texas, and others credit the founder of White Castle for developing the "Hamburger Sandwich." Records from that time are scarce, however.[2]

text: All claims for invention occur between 1885 and 1904, making it probable that the hamburger was created sometime in these two decades. Despite varieties, there are common elements in all of the narratives, most notably that the hamburger was born as a food associated with major events such as amusement parks, fairs, conferences, and festivals. All the hypotheses also share the presence of street vendors.

text: One of the first "birth of the burger" stories belongs to Canton, Ohio natives Frank and Charles Menches who were food vendors at the 1885 Erie County Fair outside of Buffalo, New York, also known as the Hamburg Fair. Legend has it that during the course of the Fair, the Menches ran out of their signature menu item of pork sausage sandwiches. Their local supplier, Hamburg butcher Andrew Klein, was reluctant to butcher more hogs during a period of unseasonable late summer heat and suggested to substitute the use of ground beef. The brothers fired some up, but both found it dry and bland. They added coffee, brown sugar and other ingredients to create a unique taste. The original sandwiches were sold with just ketchup and sliced onions. With new found success with their beef sandwich, they christened it the “hamburger” after the Erie County Fair’s home town of Hamburg. "National Birth of the Burger Day" is celebrated on September 18th to honor the invention of the burger in 1885 at the Hamburg Fair. In the 1920s, carnival historian John C. Kunzog interviewed Frank Menches about his experience at the Erie County Fair. His detailed hamburger story was published in this book, “Tanbark & Tinsel” published in 1970.

text: One of the possible fathers of the hamburger is Charlie Nagreen (1871–1951) of Seymour, Wisconsin, who at the age of 15 sold Hamburg steaks from a street stall at the annual Outagamie County Fair. Nagreen said he began by selling Hamburg steaks, but these did not have much success because people wanted to freely move around the festival without the need to eat them at his stand. In response to this, in 1885 Nagreen decided to flatten the hamburger steak and insert it between two slices of bread, so that the public could move freely from booth to booth while eating his sandwich, an innovation that was well received by his customers.[39] This became known as the "Hamburger Charlie", and Nagreen's creation was sold at the festival until his death in 1951. To this day, his accomplishment is celebrated annually with a "Burger Fest" in his honor in his hometown of Seymour.

text: Another alleged inventor of the hamburger is the cook Fletcher Davis (better known as "Old Dave"), who claimed to have had the idea of putting ground beef between two pieces of Texas Toast when one of his customers was in too much of a hurry to sit down for a meal. The customer walked away with his Hamburger Steak and seemed so content that Old Dave offered his new carryout meal as a staple menu item at the end of 1880 in Athens, Texas. Fletcher had a stall with his wife at the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904. Texan journalist Frank X. Tolbert mentions a salesman named Fletcher Davis who served hamburgers in a café at 115 Tyler Street in Athens during the late 1880s.[40][41] The locals claim that Davis was selling beef sandwiches during that time, without having a clear name for his invention. During the 1980s, the Dairy Queen ice cream chain filmed a documentary about the birthplace of the hamburger featuring Davis' story. The story of "Old Dave's Hamburger Sandwich" is also found mentioned in Ronald L. McDonald's book The Complete Hamburger.[2]

text: In the same year that Charlie Nagreen claimed to have developed his "Hamburger Charlie", the brothers and street cooks Frank and Charles Menches of Akron, Ohio claimed to have sold a ground beef sandwich at the Erie County Fair.[34] They assert that the name of the hamburger was derived from the town Hamburg, New York in Erie County, the first place in which it had been sold. This statement has been very poorly documented or substantiated, and in the case of an oral tradition, it is not without its contradictions.[citation needed] Its famous description of the secret ingredients used in the recipes, such as coffee or brown sugar, is primitive.

text: Another version of the creation of the hamburger is that of German cook Otto Kuasw, who created a very popular sailors' sandwich made of a fillet of beef patty fried in butter, served with a fried egg, between two toasted buns in 1891, at a post in Hamburg, Germany. The sandwich was called the "Deutsches Beefsteak", German for "German beefsteak". Many of the sailors traveling on ships between Hamburg and New York requested a similar "Hamburg style" sandwich at American steakhouses.

text: There are many additional claims as to the origin of the hambuger. Some enthusiasts claim the hamburger could have been created in São Gonçalo, a municipality located in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, in the 18th century by a Chef named Sauerbrown "Little" Victor, but this claim has no supporting evidence to back the opinion. A local newspaper claims that Louis Lassen, a Danish immigrant who arrived in America in 1880, sold butter and eggs as a street vendor. In 1974, in an interview with The New York Times, he recounted how he created a hamburger steak sandwich with small strips of beef for a restaurant known as Louis' Lunch. Lassen's family claims 1900 as the year of his invention. Revealed in a public confrontation between the grandson of Louis, Kenneth Davis Lassen Fletch, and his uncle, documentation signed under notary in 1900 demonstrates the development of the hamburger, as it stresses the difference between a "hamburger steak" and a "hamburger sandwich".[42] Louis' Lunch flame broils the hamburgers in the original vertical cast iron gas stoves manufactured by the Bridge and Beach, Co., St. Louis, Missouri in 1898. The stoves use hinged steel wire gridirons to hold the hamburgers in place while they cook simultaneously on both sides. The gridirons were made by Luigi Pieragostini and patented in 1938.[43]

text: Ingredients[edit]

text: Hamburg steak, once served between two loaves of bread, began to be prepared with a variety of different ingredients that were included either in the sandwich itself or as a side dish accompanying it on a plate. One of these accompaniments, which is still common with today's burger, is ketchup, a type of tomato sauce with a blend of flavors between sweet and sour that was first produced commercially in 1869 by entrepreneur and chef Henry John Heinz in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania. His company was originally called the Anchor Pickle and Vinegar Works, but in 1888 it was renamed F. & J. Heinz.[44] The use of ketchup by American consumers grew quickly after this date, and it was not long before hamburgers were almost universally accompanied by ketchup by the end of the nineteenth and into the early 20th century.[1][45] Mustard is a significantly older condiment, as it is thought that the ancient Romans used a dressing made with non-fermented grapes and grape seeds known as "mustum ardens".[46] Another ingredient incorporated into the burger, mayonnaise, appears to have been present in 18th century France, after the naval victory of Louis-François-Armand du Plessis de Richelieu in the port of Mahón in Menorca around 1756.[47]

text: Among the vegetables that come with the hamburger, the first described in the literature on its history is the onion, usually finely sliced in rings.[3][48] Thus, the hamburger came to continue the long American tradition of sandwiches featuring some kind of plant product, whether that be lettuce (as in the case of the BLT sandwich), sauerkraut (as on the reuben), coleslaw, or pickles. It is possible that after the creation of the hamburger by uniting the steak with the bread, vegetables were included to give the finished product a more "natural" appearance and taste.[45] All of these condiments were incorporated into the classical image of the hamburger during its golden age, the 1940s.[45] In some cases, the hamburger is prepared differently and distinctly to add regional flavor, as in the case of Tex-Mex style burgers, which are served with a side of chili con carne.

text: French fries are an invention of the Low Countries,[49][50] and Belgian historian Jo Gerard mentions that they originated around 1680 in both Belgium and the Spanish Netherlands, specifically in the area of "the Meuse valley between Dinant and Liège". The people of this region used to prepare meals with small amounts of fried fish, but when the river froze over and fishing became impossible, they would cut up potatoes and fry them in animal oil.[49] French fries were introduced as a snack in American cafés during the early 19th century,[50] but they did not become popular until large fast food companies such as McDonald's and Burger King incorporated them into their menus during the mid-20th century. The improvements in potato freezing technology made by J.R. Simplot of Idaho City in 1953, made the large scale production of French fries possible. Before the potatoes were frozen, however, they had still lost some of their flavor during frying, but new processes such as a further improved Simplot invention avoided this inconvenience by 1967, largely thanks to the use of a mixture of cow tallow and soybean oil.[50] This allowed Simplot and McDonald's founder Ray Kroc to collaborate, resulting in ready-peeled potatoes from Simplot's farms being delivered directly to McDonald's kitchens, where they were fried and served to customers. Initially, however, there were safety concerns raised over some fries and the kitchens in which they were prepared, leading some companies, such as White Castle, to remove them from their menus during the 1950s.[50]

text: At the end of the 19th century, a new generation of cola emerged, a beverage that would soon join beer as the most traditional drinks served alongside the hamburger. The first recipe for Coca-Cola was invented in 1885 in Columbus, Georgia by grocer John Pemberton.[51] Originally called coca wine (the trademark was "Pemberton's French Wine Coca"), it may have been inspired by the formidable success of Vin Mariani, a European coca wine. In the late 19th century, it was sold as a bottled soft drink in most of the United States. In the early 20th century, another beverage, Pepsi, was created by pharmacist Caleb Bradham and quickly came to rival the sales of Coca-Cola. Strategic alliances between large burger restaurant chains and these two soft drink companies greatly increased the beverages' availability to the general public.

text: Commercialization[edit]

text: The dawn of the 20th century witnessed the need to provide food for people living in highly productive urban centers with high population densities. Food also had to be economically affordable for the working class in order for them to maintain their labor and industrial production. The burger was born in a time when people needed to eat both "fast" and "cheap".[52] Technological advances in the field of food preservation, as well as improvements in agricultural production and transportation, made it possible for hamburgers to be a practical choice of food for urban dwellers since their very creation. The socio-economic environment of the United States at the time of the burger's rise to popularity coincided with the end of World War I and the beginning of the Great Depression of 1929. This environment was particularly favorable for fostering inexpensive food, which was one reason why five-cent hamburgers were so popular. After its invention during the first decade of the 20th century, the hamburger came to be marketed on a large scale, after "visionaries" realized that it would benefit greatly from a mass production process.[53]

text: The first automobile production line was created by Karl Benz in Germany in 1888. The widespread appearance of telephones occurred at the beginning of the 20th century, along with other modern means of communication, including radio. For the average American who had not eaten in a restaurant in his or her entire life,[54] the fast food chains that appeared in the cities offered an alternative form of restaurant in which eating was very much a public activity. The concept of a "greasy spoon" was thus born with these restaurants[citation needed], in which hygiene suffered in exchange for more inexpensive food. On the other hand, there was a growing interconnected world in which trips by car, bus, and rail became increasingly available. All these means of transport were improving at the time, and soon it was necessary to feed a growing population that was "in permanent transit", frequently moving through different cities on business.[55][56] George Pullman invented the sleeping car and the dining car in response to the needs of these people in the 1870s. Similarly, the English immigrant Frederick Henry Harvey was the first to use "dynamic mass movement" in restoring the Fred Harvey Company, which catered to the patrons of a chain of hotels located near railway stations, as well as offering catering, services, and high quality products on the trains themselves.[53]

text: Contemporary American society also witnessed the creation of new fast foods that originated from the traditional cuisine of various ethnic groups from around the world. For example, German immigrant Charles Feltman invented the hot dog in 1867 in his stall in Coney Island, New York by pairing a frankfurter with a bread bun.[57] Imitators such as Harry Magley and Charles Stevens soon began selling hot dogs at New York Polo Grounds baseball games. Similarly, Italian immigrants sold ice cream from vending carts in the streets or pasta at their restaurants. Chinese immigrants initially opened restaurants to cater to their fellow Chinese-Americans, but they gradually became accepted by the American clientele, sometimes resulting in truly Chinese-American cuisine such as chop suey. In this diverse world of ethnic foods, the hamburger was able to rise to mainstream popularity and become a national food of the United States.

text: White Castle System[edit]

text: On November 16, 1916, chef and entrepreneur Walter "Walt" Anderson opened a hamburger stand in Wichita, Kansas that used hygienic cooking methods, including grills and spatulas, and impressed his Wichita customers so much that many would become regular patrons. At this time, the hamburger was still not widely known by the American public. Anderson added onion rings to the burgers while they grilled, giving them a distinctive flavor.[48] As demand increased, customers often bought his hamburgers by the dozen, giving rise to the company's subsequently popular slogan: "buy 'em by the sack". Despite some growth, Anderson had opened only four stands in the busiest areas of the city. In 1926, Edgar Waldo "Billy" Ingram collaborated with Anderson to open the first White Castle restaurant in Wichita. The restaurant was founded on the idea of cooking a hamburger quickly, giving it the honor of being the first fast food restaurant.

text: Ingram soon realized that the word burger evoked connotations of circus performances at livestock markets and greasy pieces of meat eaten in the poorest districts of the city in the collective mind of the American public. He tried to change those connotations from White Castle's earliest days. At the same time, he became known to some as the Henry Ford of the hamburger,[26] while inventing a restaurant concept he called the "White Castle System", which helped the hamburger achieve fame.[53] Between 1923 and 1931, the "White Castle System" established almost a hundred restaurants in cities throughout the Midwestern United States. In order to raise awareness among White Castle employees, a newsletter entitled "The hot hamburger" was circulated throughout the company, which challenged the employees to improve the sale of the burgers with a simple idea: to be able to prepare burgers rapidly so anyone could purchase and eat them anytime and anywhere. Instead of waiting for half an hour to be served at a traditional restaurant, the White Castle System provided rapid service and a menu centered around the hamburger. At the time, the hamburger was typically served with coffee.[53] Upton Sinclair's The Jungle had already caused public outrage over the safety of processed meat, so by the 1920s, the general public had come to expect a clean and hygienic hamburger. In addition to offering clean and safe food, White Castle offered regularity and standardization, ensuring that each patty was served in the same manner in each restaurant. At the time, this was an entirely novel idea that would revolutionize the sale of food itself with a style that would come to be known as fast food.[53] During its early years, White Castle emphasized providing quality coffee, and collaborated with universities to publish studies on the nutritional quality of their hamburgers.

text: The success of the White Castle chain was rooted largely in the power of propaganda, something that was both an original innovation and necessary to change the public's negative perception of the hamburger.[53] In 1931, it became the first restaurant to advertise in newspapers, using its old "buy 'em by the sack" slogan. White Castle also pioneered the concept of take-out service, and the restaurant is further known for being the first to market square burgers, called "sliders", which were sold for five cents into the 1940s.[53] White Castle was founded in March 1921 in Wichita, Kansas by Billy Ingram and his business partner, the cook Walter Anderson, and they opened a second restaurant in Kansas City in 1924. In 1932, White Castle created its first subsidiary: Paperlynen Company, which provided the cartons and wrapping paper that the food was served in, as well as the hats worn by the kitchen staff. It acquired porcelain companies in a similar fashion, placing them in charge of building small White Castle restaurants using white porcelain facades.

text: Walter Anderson contributed a number of novel ideas to White Castle during its early years, including the creation of a special spatula and a special bread for the burgers. In 1949, an employee named Earl Howell calculated the amount of time that it took to break hamburgers apart in a presentable fashion, eventually leading him to create the perforated burger. By 1951, White Castle had incorporated five perforations into its burgers.[48] Before Anderson, hamburgers were cooked on a grill for an indefinite period of time and minced meat balls were "crushed" into conventional slices of bread, like a sandwich. The meat was frozen and hamburgers came to be cooked from frozen, instead of using fresh meat. White Castle revolutionized the burger-making process by regularizing the finished products and using hygienic preparation techniques that were in clear view of the customers.[48]

text: White Castle had a very large progression of sales, and its success was such, that by 1926, it had already generated competitors and imitators in the emerging hamburger business. One of these imitators also had a highly similar name, White Tower Hamburgers of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, founded by the father and son tandem of John E. and Thomas E. Saxe. The creation of White Tower led to numerous legal battles between it and White Castle during the 1930s. By 1930, White Castle already had 116 restaurants spread over a distance of 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi), all of which were located within the United States. [1] The company eventually became a large restaurant chain, however, there has never been a restaurant outside of the United States.[55] The American shortage of beef during World War II had little effect on sales across White Castle, due to the effect of vertical integration along with the appearance of fast food chains that operated on a franchise model that emphasized horizontal integration.[53]

text: McDonald's era[edit]

text: In 1937, Patrick McDonald and his two sons Richard and Maurice inaugurated the simple restaurant "Airdrome" on Huntington Drive (Route 66) near the airport in the American city of Monrovia, California. The success of its sales eventually led to the May 15, 1940, opening of a restaurant named McDonald's along U.S. Route 66 in San Bernardino, California. After analyzing their sales, the brothers discovered that, to their surprise, 80% of their revenue was coming from selling hamburgers.[58] The menu initially featured 25 different dishes, the majority of which were barbecued. Through their new restaurant, the McDonald brothers introduced the notion of fast food to parts of the Western United States by 1948. From the beginning, McDonald's focused on making hot dogs and hamburgers as efficiently and quickly as possible.[9][58] During the 1940s, simple and formative concepts took root at McDonald's, including the preparation and service of burgers in just one minute and the ability for customers to eat in their own cars in a drive-in style. All the while, the restaurant was trying to further develop a hamburger that was inexpensive enough to be within the economic reach of most Americans. By the 1950s, the concept of drive-in style service had become firmly established and hamburgers and cars had become closely connected in the minds of many Americans. It was now not only possible for a customer to purchase a hamburger without getting out of a car, and a customer also no longer needed to wait to be served.[9] The McDonald brothers built upon the achievements of their original San Bernardino restaurant when in 1953 they began franchising their now famous chain restaurants, starting in Phoenix, Arizona and Downey, California (the latter of which is still in operation). Later, Ray Kroc opened one in the northwest Chicago suburb of Des Plaines, Illinois on April 15, 1955, which has now been converted into the McDonald's Museum.[9] It is noteworthy that the original McDonald's mascot was a hamburger faced cook called "Speedee" that would serve as the iconographic identity of the company until being replaced by the clown Ronald McDonald in 1963.

text: The McDonald brothers intensively studied the existing kitchen protocol of their restaurants in an effort to improve them. They looked at different options that could increase the speed of cooking hamburgers, designing and patenting special grills that had a higher output, made their cutlery and other kitchen utensils disposable, and introduced dishwashers that reduced the costs of water, soap, and labor. The brothers also created a detailed system for operating each kitchen throughout the franchise in a similar and largely standardized manner, as well as recruiting adolescents as employees in the kitchens.[9]

text: The company began to expand at a much faster rate when 52-year-old ice cream machinery salesman Ray Kroc took over as its chief executive.[58] Kroc was the initiator of both McDonald's expansion across the United States and the definitive standardization of its burgers. He was not alone, however, as some of his co-workers were also very productive and innovative. McDonald's executive and food scientist Herb Peterson invented the McMuffin in 1972 and also the now famous greeting, "May I have your order, please?". In another key development, Jim Delligatti of the Pittsburgh franchise invented the Big Mac in 1967. The McDonald's successful expansion was mainly due to its use of the franchise system, an innovation borrowed from a sewing machine manufacturer, the Singer Corporation. Singer had developed it during the late 19th century, and it was so successful that it was soon adopted by its competitors.[59] Nowadays, McDonald's even has its own university for training its staff: Hamburger University, located in Oak Brook, Illinois. Graduates receive a degree entitled "bachelor of hamburgerology with a minor in French fries".[60] As McDonald's expanded into other countries, it encountered more opposition and general difficulties, as was the case in 1996 when it opened a restaurant in New Delhi amid outcry from Indian leaders.[61] In 1995, the country with the most McDonald's restaurants (aside from the United States) was Japan, followed by Canada and Germany, while the company itself had restaurants in more than 100 countries.[61] Throughout its history, the company has become a symbol of globalization and Western culture, sometimes resulting in it being the subject of anger and protests in various parts of the world.[7]

text: Variants[edit]

text: Many different variants of the hamburger have been created over the years, some of which have become very popular. Much of this diversity has been the product of other restaurant chains that have tried to reproduce the success of McDonald's and White Castle, while others served to influence McDonald's. An example of a restaurant that influenced McDonald's and its imitators is Big Boy, which was first opened in 1936 by Bob Wian in Glendale, California and became known in that locale as Bob's Big Boy.[62] It was at this restaurant that a major hamburger variant, the double deck cheeseburger, with two beef patties, was first made. Wian's creation was distinctively served by Big Boy restaurants with the bun sliced twice, the center slice—known as the club section—separating the two patties. The chain also popularized the drive-in restaurant format, taken and simplified by McDonald's type fast food operators. By the 1960s, Big Boy had expanded throughout the United States and Canada. Despite the benefits it provided to Wian, the chain was sold along with the rights to their signature Big Boy hamburger to the Marriott Corporation in 1967. This same year McDonald's franchisee Jim Delligatti, created an imitation of the Big Boy — the Big Mac.[63] An example of the many McDonald's and White Castle imitators is Kewpee Hamburgers, a fast-food chain founded in 1923 in Flint, Michigan by Samuel V. Blair as "Kewpee Hotel Hamburgs."[53]

text: As with the invention of the hamburger, the exact origins of the cheeseburger are unknown. Several chefs claim to have been the first to add a slice of cheese to a hamburger. Lionel Sternberger of Rite Spot in Pasadena, California takes credit for the cheeseburger, claiming that he invented it between 1924 and 1926.[45] A description from a 1928 menu from the O'Dell Restaurant in Los Angeles reveals that it was serving burgers with slices of cheese at the time.[4] Luis Ballast, owner of the Humpty Dumpty drive-in restaurant in Denver, Colorado, made an attempt to create a cheeseburger with a registered trademark known as a "yellowburger" in 1935. J.C. Reynolds, the operator of a bar in Southern California from 1932 to 1984, popularized a pimento burger.[4] Processed cheese, the type of cheese most used in cheeseburgers, was invented in 1911 by Walter Gerber of Thun, Switzerland, although the first U.S. patent awarded for it was given to James L. Kraft in 1916.[64][65] Kraft Foods went on to create the first commercial version of sliced processed cheese, which was first introduced to the market in 1950.

text: After World War II, a number of hamburger restaurants known as InstaBurger King (later Burger King) began emerging, the first of which was opened on December 4, 1954 in a suburb of Miami, Florida. It was established by James McLamore and David Edgerton, both of whom were students at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration.[66] McLamore had visited the original McDonald's in San Bernardino, California when it was still owned by the McDonald brothers, and saw the potential that existed for the mass production of hamburgers. He was so inspired by this visit that he decided to create a similar burger chain himself. By 1959, Burger King already had five restaurants in metropolitan Miami, and its early success prompted McLamore and Edgerton to expand throughout the United States by using a franchise system that allowed them to grow the business at a relatively low cost. They formed Burger King Corporation as a parent company to the franchises they were selling throughout the United States.[67] [62] The Burger King Corporation was acquired by the Pillsbury Company in 1967, and during the 1970s, it began to expand outside the United States, principally in South America and Europe. Burger King's core product has long been the Whopper, which was created in 1957 by founder James McLamore and initially sold for 37 cents.[68]

text: Wendy's was founded by Dave Thomas and John T. Schuessler on November 15, 1969 in Columbus, Ohio. By the late 1970s, it had become the third largest hamburger company in the United States.[69][70] Wendy's has consistently tried to differentiate itself from other hamburger restaurants by its claim that it makes its burgers using fresh, not frozen, beef. Wendy's sparked a controversy and entered into American pop culture in the 1980s with its "Where's the beef?" advertising slogan and an accompanying campaign stressing the primacy of the beef patty over the hamburger's other ingredients.

text: Culinary myth[edit]

text: The hamburger was very popular among Americans during the postwar period following World War I,[56] even in popular culture. An example of this was the prominent appearance of hamburgers in E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre comic strip, which prominently featured a cartoon character named Popeye the Sailor who ate spinach to sustain his superhuman strength. Popeye's first appearance was as a supporting character on January 17, 1929 alongside many other characters. One of these characters was J. Wellington Wimpy (often shortened to just "Wimpy"), a lover of hamburgers who was both polite and gluttonous. His signature phrase, "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today", became popular and widely known. During the height of his popularity in the 1930s, Wimpy introduced the hamburger to the youth of the time as a healthy food. It also resulted in the creation of a chain of fast food restaurants called Wimpy's in his honor, which sold hamburgers for ten cents.[50] In a similar fashion, the fictional character Jughead Jones, who first appeared in Archie Comics in 1941, was passionate about food generally, and hamburgers specifically.

text: Fictional characters related to the hamburger, such as the Ronald McDonald clown character designed by Willard Scott who first appeared on television in 1963,[71] soon became a recognizable part of American culture. The burger also made appearances in underground comix such as Zap Comix#2 during the late 1960s, in which cartoonist Robert Crumb designed a character called "Hamburger Hi-Jinx". By the end of the decade, pop art was including the hamburger as an artistic element, appearing in the works of Andy Warhol (Dual Hamburger), Claes Oldenburg (Floor Burger), Mel Ramos (Vinaburger, 1965), and more recently, David LaChapelle (Death by Hamburger, 2002).

text: An example of the popularity and identification that the burger enjoyed among the American public was the name of the Battle of Hamburger Hill, which occurred in May 1969 during the Vietnam War. Its name was inspired by the number of American and Vietnamese casualties, which made the scene resembles a "butcher".[72] The hamburger was also the inspiration of Star Wars creator George Lucas's design for the Millennium Falcon ship.[73] Hamburgers also appear in computer games, as in the case of BurgerTime, an arcade-style game created in 1982 by Data East Corporation. The hamburger also appears prominently on American television shows such as American Eats and Man v. Food.

text: By the 1960s, American society had become highly motorized, largely due to the 1956 Federal Highway Act passed by President Dwight Eisenhower and inspired by the German Autobahn, as well as the impressive growth rates of American automobile manufacturers at the time.[2] Due to the extensive use of cars at the time, hamburgers were often served at drive-ins, often by waiters known as carhops. Drive-in restaurants first appeared in the United States in the early 1930s, and gradually become a common sight across the country. The ability to serve hamburgers to customers in their cars was seen as a business opportunity by countless fast-food chains, especially McDonald's.[9] The popularity of the hamburger grew rapidly among the American population during this period, and statistics indicate that the average American was eating three burgers per week.[5]

text: During the Cold War, the hamburger became a national symbol of the United States. As private outdoor social events, often held in backyards and featuring a barbecue, became more widespread during the mid-1950s, the hamburger gained a new culinary and social relevance in the country.[74][35] By the late 1960s, hamburgers began to grow in size as various burger chains competed with each other, resulting in Burger King launching the Whopper and McDonald's launching the Quarter Pounder. As the race between the major chains grew more intense, the prices of their burgers increased, and the days when a hamburger could be bought for just a few cents were numbered.

text: In the 1970s, major hamburger chains began to use considerable resources in marketing their products. They began to compete directly with each other through their advertising, much of which was comparative and often featured direct allusions and comparisons.[60] The event came to be jokingly referred to as the "burger wars" by many Americans. By the end of the 1980s, the era of slogans in large chain restaurants had begun.

text: Global phenomenon[edit]

text: The modern hamburger was developed in the United States, but by the end of World War II, around the middle of the 20th century, it began to spread to other countries as fast food became globalized.[6] The main cause of this gradual globalization was the successes of the large restaurant chains. Their desires to expand their businesses and increase their profits resulted in them creating franchises around the world.[6] McDonald's was among the very first of the burger chains to take the global establishment of its brand seriously,[7] but it was not the only one. Wimpy began operating in the United Kingdom in 1954, 20 years before McDonald's began operation in the country, and by 1970 it had expanded to over a thousand restaurants in 23 countries.[75] On August 21, 1971, in Zaandam, near Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Ahold opened its first European franchise. In the 1970s, McDonald's began to expand into Europe and Australia. In Asia, Japan saw the establishment of its own fast food chain in 1972: MOS Burger (モスバーガー, Mosu bāgā), an abbreviation of "Mountain, Ocean, Sun", which eventually became a direct competitor to McDonald's. All of its products, however, were variations on the burger adapted to the Asian world, including the teriyaki burger, takumi burger, and riceburger.[10] In Hong Kong, Aji Ichiban competed with large chains before it spread quickly throughout Asia.[61] One of the first hamburger vending machines debuted in Amsterdam in 1941 under the brand FEBO, its name derived from its original place of creation, the Ferdinand Bolstraat.

text: At the same time the hamburger was growing in popularity around the world, it took on a variety of local features in different locations. Such examples of this include ground meat made from local animals, such as kangaroos in Australia,[76] or Tex-Mex-style dishes like chilli con carne.

text: The expansion and standardization of the hamburger has led to the creation of a price index that can be used as an economic reference between different countries known as the Big Mac Index. It measures the worth (in US$) of a burger in different parts of the world, allowing for the comparison of the purchasing power parity of 120 national economies in which McDonald's does business.[77] American sociologist George Ritzer coined the related concept of "McDonaldization" in his 1995 book McDonaldization of Society.[7] Another byproduct of the globalization of fast food was the creation of international competitive eating contests that involve contestants from many different countries. One of the best known is the Krystal Square Off, run by the fast-food chain Krystal and sponsored by the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOC), which has been held annually since 2004.

text: Present day[edit]

text: In the 20th century, the hamburger has appeared as the central topic in some books on the literature of culinary topics. An example of this is Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, published by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser in 2001, that examines the local and global influence of the American fast food industry.[56] An example of a modern variation of the hamburger is the so-called gourmet burger, which is made by haute cuisine chefs with patties that include luxury ingredients. One of the first such burgers was cooked in New York City by chef Daniel Boulud in June 2001, and subsequently sold for US$29 with loin, ribs Bres, canned black truffles, and a mirepoix of vegetables. The Manhattan restaurant "Old Homestead", one of the oldest steakhouses in the country, offers a $44 hamburger with beef-bred Japanese wagyū.[4] An haute cuisine burger created by Richard Blais, a student of Ferran Adrià, was introduced in 2004 at a restaurant in Atlanta, where it is served with a crystal chain and a silk ribbon. In response to the haute cuisine take on the hamburger, others have created more humble versions. Alberto Chicote of Madrid makes homemade hamburgers in his kitchen, using Iberian pork along with homemade ketchup and mustard.[78] In 1993, Max Schondor created a hamburger made of soy. In a 2005 episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, the adventurous title character visits Mr. Krabs's popular Krabby Patty burgers, where hamburgers figure prominently in the story.

text: In the United States during the 20th century, there have been numerous celebrations marking the centenary of the burger. Two locations in particular organized high-profile events to celebrate 100 years of the hamburger. One was held in Athens, Texas in November 2006, in honor of Fletcher Davis. In a resolution made by the State of Texas, it was established that Athens is the "Original Home of Hamburger". However, in August 2007, the state of Wisconsin made the same claim on behalf of the town of Seymour, the home of Charlie Nagreen who also claimed to be the creator of the hamburger.[8] These two decisions have split the honor of creating the hamburger between these two American cities. The town of Seymour continues to annually celebrate a "Burger Fest" on the first Saturday of each August.

text: Nutritional controversies[edit]

text: Since the latter part of the 20th century, the burger has undergone several controversies regarding its nutritional values. In an era in which a growing amount of the world's population has become either overweight or more conscious of weight and the need for a healthy diet in general, the appearance of exceptionally larger burgers (popularly known as "XXL hamburgers") has generated considerable controversy.[79] One example of this is the Triple Whopper, which surpasses the one thousand calorie threshold established by the Health Strategy Against Obesity, which is promoted by the health institutes of the Spanish Association of Food and Nutrition Safety (AESAN). AESAN works to prevent the growth of the incidence of obesity in all people, particularly children. More generally, dietitians are beginning to see that the consumption of foods high in calories can cause excessive appetite.[80] In response to this message, many restaurant chains have reduced the calories in their burgers since the beginning of the 20th century. The late 20th century witnessed a lawsuit brought by McDonald's against two environmental activists, Helen Steel and David Morris, that was colloquially known as McLibel. McDonald's took action following the publication of a pamphlet by Steel and Morris that was entitled What’s wrong with McDonald’s: Everything they don’t want you to know, which was subsequently developed into a documentary called McLibel.

text: Media[edit]

text: In 2004, Morgan Spurlock addressed the obsessive consumption of hamburgers by some Americans by directing and starring in the documentary film Super Size Me. In the film, he himself eats only McDonald's food for an entire month and documents how his health changes. That same year saw the premiere of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, a film in which White Castle restaurants played a vital part. Two years later, in 2006, the film Fast Food Nation presented a fictional representation of the intrigues and machinations of the meat industry on the border between Mexico and the United States. It is largely based on the 2001 book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal.


document_title: Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show)

question_text: how many wheel of fortune million dollar winners

root

text: Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show)

text: Gameplay[edit]

text: Main game[edit]

text: The core game is based on Hangman. Each round has a category and a blank word puzzle, with each blank representing a letter in the answer, and punctuation revealed as needed.[7] Most puzzles are straightforward figures of speech that fit within a mostly static list of categories, and this list has evolved over the course of the series. Crossword puzzles were added to the rotation in 2016. In such rounds, a clue bonding the words in the puzzle is given instead of a traditional category, and contestants win by solving all the words in the crossword.[8] The titular Wheel of Fortune is a roulette-style wheel mechanism with 24 spaces, most of which are labeled with dollar amounts ranging from $500 to $900, plus a top dollar value: $2,500 in round 1, $3,500 in rounds 2 and 3, and $5,000 for round 4 and any subsequent rounds. The wheel also features two Bankrupt wedges and one Lose a Turn, both of which forfeit the contestant's turn, with the former also eliminating any cash or prizes the contestant has accumulated within the round.[9] Each game features three contestants, or occasionally, three two-contestant teams positioned behind a single scoreboard with its own flipper. The left scoreboard from the viewer's perspective is colored red, the center yellow, and the right blue, with the contestants' positions determined by a random selection prior to taping.[10]

tag: p

text:
A contestant spins the wheel to determine a dollar value and guess a consonant.[note 2]
Calling a correct letter earns the value before the corresponding flipper, multiplied by the number of times that the letter appears in the puzzle.[12] Calling a correct letter keeps the wheel in the contestant's control, allowing the contestant to spin again, buy a vowel for a flat rate of $250, or attempt to solve the puzzle. Contestants may continue to buy vowels so long as they have enough money to keep doing so, until all of the vowels in the puzzle have been revealed.[9] Control passes to the next contestant clockwise if the wheel lands on Lose a Turn or Bankrupt, if the contestant calls a letter that is not in the puzzle, calls a letter that has already been called in that round, fails to call a letter within five seconds of the wheel stopping, or attempts unsuccessfully to solve the puzzle. The only exception is the Free Play wedge, on which the contestant may call a consonant for $500 per occurrence, call a free vowel, or solve the puzzle, with no penalty for an incorrect letter or answer.

text: In the first three rounds, the wheel contains a Wild Card and a Gift Tag, while two ½ Car tags are present in rounds two and three only (except on episodes with two-player teams). The Wild Card may be used to call an additional consonant after any turn (for the amount that the contestant has just spun) or taken to the bonus round to call an extra consonant there. The Gift Tag offers either a $1,000 credit toward purchases from, or $1,000 in cash courtesy of, the sponsoring company, and the ½ Car tags award a car if the contestant wins the round(s) in which he or she claims both. Unlike the other tags, the ½ Car tags are replaced in subsequent rounds unless the car is won. A special wedge in the first two rounds awards a prize which is described by the announcer if won. All of the tags and the prize wedge are located over the $500 wedges, so calling a letter that appears in the puzzle when landed upon awards both the tag/wedge and $500 per every occurrence of that letter in the puzzle. The first three rounds also contain a special wedge which, if won and taken to the bonus round, offers an opportunity to play that round for $1,000,000. A contestant must solve the puzzle in order to keep any cash, prizes, or extras accumulated during that round except for the Wild Card, which is kept until the contestant either loses it to Bankrupt or uses it. Bankrupt does not affect score from previous rounds, but it does take away the Wild Card, individual ½ Car tags, and/or million dollar wedge if any was claimed in a previous round. Contestants who solve a round for less than $1,000 in cash and prizes ($2,000 on weeks with two-contestant teams) have their scores increased to that amount.

text: Each game also features three toss-up puzzles, which reveal the puzzle one random letter at a time, and award cash to whoever rings in with the right answer. The first determines who is interviewed first by the host, the second determines who starts round 1, and the third determines who starts round 4. Respectively, the toss-ups are valued at $1,000, $2,000, and $3,000. Contestants may only ring in once for each toss-up puzzle, and no cash is awarded if all three contestants fail to solve the puzzle, or if the last letter of the puzzle is revealed. In this case, the contestant in the position closest to the host is interviewed first or starts the round. In addition to these, each game has a minimum of four rounds, with more played if time permits.[12] Rounds 2 and 3 are respectively started by the next two contestants clockwise from the contestant who began round 1.

text: Round 2 features two "mystery wedges". Calling a correct letter after landing upon one offers the contestant the chance to accept its face value of $1,000 per letter, or forfeit that amount to flip over the wedge and see whether its reverse side contains a $10,000 cash prize or Bankrupt. Once either mystery wedge is flipped over, the other becomes a standard $1,000 space and cannot be flipped. Round 3 is a prize puzzle, which offers a prize (usually a trip) to the contestant who solves it. Starting with season 31 in 2013, an "Express" wedge is also placed on the wheel in round 3. A contestant who lands on this space and calls a consonant that appears in the puzzle receives $1,000 per appearance. The contestant can then either "pass" and continue the round normally, or "play" and keep calling consonants for $1,000 each (without spinning) and buying vowels for $250. The Express play ends when the contestant either calls an incorrect letter (which has the same effect as landing on a Bankrupt wedge) or solves the puzzle.[13]

text: The final round is always played at least in part in a "speed-up" format, in which the host spins the wheel to determine the value of each consonant, with $1,000 being added to the value on which the wheel stops before the red contestant's arrow. Vowels do not add or deduct money from the contestants' scores in the speed-up round. The contestant in control calls one letter, and if it appears in the puzzle, the contestant is given three seconds to attempt to solve.[note 3] Play proceeds clockwise, starting with the contestant who was in control at the time of the final spin, until the puzzle is solved. The three-second timer does not begin until the hostess has revealed all instances of a called letter and moved aside from the puzzle board, and the contestant may offer multiple guesses on his/her turn. After the speed-up round, the total winnings of the three contestants are compared. The contestant with the highest total winnings wins the game and advances to the bonus round. Contestants who fail to earn any cash or prizes in the game are awarded a consolation prize of $1,000 (or $2,000 on weeks with two-contestant teams).

text: If a tie for first place occurs after the speed-up round, an additional toss-up puzzle is played between the tied contestants. The contestant who solves the toss-up puzzle wins $1,000[14] and advances to the bonus round.

text: Bonus round[edit]

text: Before the bonus round begins, the winning contestant chooses one of three categories for his or her puzzle (prior to season 35, the puzzle and category were predetermined). After doing so, the contestant spins a smaller wheel with 24 envelopes to determine the prize. He or she is then shown a puzzle in the chosen category, and every instance of R, S, T, L, N, and E is revealed. The contestant provides three more consonants (four if he/she is holding the Wild Card) and one more vowel, then has 10 seconds to solve the puzzle after his or her other letters (if any) are revealed. The contestant may make as many guesses as necessary, so long as the contestant begins the correct answer before time expires. Whether or not the contestant solves the puzzle, the host opens the envelope at the end of the round to reveal the prize at stake. Prizes in the bonus round include various cash amounts (with the lowest being the season number multiplied by $1,000), a vehicle (or two vehicles during weeks with two-contestant teams), and a top prize of $100,000.

text: If the contestant has the Million Dollar Wedge, the $100,000 envelope is replaced with a $1,000,000 envelope. The $1,000,000 prize has been awarded three times: to Michelle Loewenstein (on the episode that aired October 14, 2008),[15] to Autumn Erhard (May 30, 2013),[16] and to Sarah Manchester (September 17, 2014).[17] Contestants who win the $1,000,000 may receive it in installments over 20 years, or in a lump sum of that amount's present value.[18] At the end of the Bonus Round, Sajak will reveal where the $1,000,000 envelope was on the prize wheel if the contestant failed to land on it.

text: Previous rules[edit]

text: Originally, after winning a round, contestants spent their winnings on prizes that were presented onstage. At any time during a shopping round, most often if the contestant did not have enough left to buy another prize,[19] a contestant could choose to put his or her winnings on a gift certificate, or he or she could put the winnings "on account" for use in a later shopping round. However, a contestant lost any money on account by landing on Bankrupt or failing to claim it by not winning subsequent rounds.[9] The shopping element was eliminated from the syndicated version on the episode that aired October 5, 1987,[20] both to speed up gameplay and to alleviate the taxes paid by contestants.[12] However, the network version continued to use the shopping element until the end of its first NBC run on June 30, 1989.[21]

text: Before the introduction of toss-up puzzles at the start of the 18th syndicated season in 2000,[22] the contestant at the red arrow always started round 1, with the next contestant clockwise starting each subsequent round.[23] In addition, if a tie for first place occurred, an additional speed-up round was played between the tied contestants for the right to go to the bonus round. The wheel formerly featured a Free Spin wedge, which automatically awarded a token that the contestant could turn in after a lost turn to keep control of the wheel.[24] It was replaced in 1989 with a single Free Spin token placed over a selected cash wedge. Free Spin was retired, and Free Play introduced, at the start of the 27th syndicated season in 2009.[25] Between September 16, 1996[26] and the end of season 30 in 2013, the show featured a progressive Jackpot wedge, which had been in several different rounds in its history.[note 4] The jackpot started at $5,000 and had the value of every spin within the round added to it. To claim the jackpot, a contestant had to land on the wedge, call a correct letter, and solve the puzzle all in the same turn. In later years, it also offered $500 per correct letter and $500 to the jackpot, regardless of whether or not it was won in that turn.

text: The network version allowed champions to appear for up to five days originally, which was later reduced to three. The syndicated version, which originally retired contestants after one episode, adopted the three-day champion rule at the start of the seventh season in 1989.[29] In 1996, this was changed to have the top three winners from the week's first four shows returned to compete in the "Friday Finals". When the jackpot wedge was introduced, it began at $10,000 instead of $5,000 on Fridays. The rules allowing returning champions were eliminated permanently beginning with the syndicated episode aired September 21, 1998, and contestants appear only on a single episode, reverting to the pre-1989 rules.[30]

text: Before December 1981, the show did not feature a bonus round.[9] Under the bonus round's original rules, no letters were provided automatically. The contestant asked for five consonants and a vowel, and then had fifteen seconds to attempt solving the puzzle. Also, bonus prizes were selected by the contestant at the start of the round.[31] The current time limit and rules for letter selection were introduced on October 3, 1988.[32] Starting on September 4, 1989, the first episode of the seventh syndicated season, bonus prizes were selected by the contestant choosing from one of five envelopes labeled W, H, E, E, and L. One prize was always $25,000 in cash, and the rest were changed weekly. Any prize that was won was taken out of rotation for the rest of the week.[29] During seasons 16 through 18 (1998–2001), the $25,000 remained in-place the entire week of shows regardless if it was won. At the start of season 19 on September 3, 2001, there were three car envelopes and two $25,000 envelopes, which were available the entire week of shows.[33] These envelopes were replaced with the bonus wheel on October 22, 2001.[34]

text: Conception and development[edit]

text: Merv Griffin conceived Wheel of Fortune just as the original version of Jeopardy!, another show he had created, was ending its 11-year run on NBC with Art Fleming as its host. Griffin decided to create a Hangman-style game after recalling long car trips as a child, on which he and his sister played Hangman. After he discussed the idea with Merv Griffin Enterprises' staff, they thought that the idea would work as a game show if it had a "hook". He decided to add a roulette-style wheel because he was always "drawn to" such wheels when he saw them in casinos. He and MGE's then-president Murray Schwartz consulted an executive of Caesars Palace to find out how to build such a wheel.[35]

text: When Griffin pitched the idea for the show to Lin Bolen, then the head of NBC's daytime programming division, she approved, but wanted the show to have more glamour to attract the female audience. She suggested that Griffin incorporate a shopping element into the gameplay, and so, in 1973, he created a pilot episode titled Shopper's Bazaar, with Chuck Woolery as host and Mike Lawrence as announcer. The pilot started with the three contestants being introduced individually, with Lawrence describing the prizes that they chose to play for. The main game was played to four rounds, with the values on the wheel wedges increasing after the second round. Unlike the show it evolved into, Shopper's Bazaar had a vertically mounted wheel,[36] which was spun automatically rather than by the contestants. This wheel lacked the Bankrupt wedge and featured a wedge where a contestant could call a vowel for free, as well as a "Your Own Clue" wedge that allowed contestants to pick up a rotary telephone and hear a private clue about the puzzle. At the end of the game, the highest-scoring contestant played a bonus round called the "Shopper's Special" where all the vowels in the puzzle were already there, and the contestant had 30 seconds to call out consonants in the puzzle.

text: Edd Byrnes, an actor from 77 Sunset Strip, served as host for the second and third pilots, both titled Wheel of Fortune.[37] These pilots were directed by Marty Pasetta, who gave the show a "Vegas" feel that more closely resembled the look and feel that the actual show ended up having, a wheel that was now spun by the contestants themselves, and a lighted mechanical puzzle board with letters that were now manually turnable. Showcase prizes on these pilots were located behind the puzzle board, and during shopping segments a list of prizes and their price values scrolled on the right of the screen. By the time production began in December 1974, Woolery was selected to host, the choice being made by Griffin after he reportedly heard Byrnes reciting "A-E-I-O-U" to himself in an effort to remember the vowels.[37] Susan Stafford turned the letters on Byrnes' pilot episodes, a role that she also held when the show was picked up as a series.[35][38]

text: Personnel[edit]

text: Hosts and hostesses[edit]

text: The original host of Wheel of Fortune was Chuck Woolery, who hosted the series from its 1975 premiere[9][39] until December 25, 1981, save for one week in August 1980 when Alex Trebek hosted in his place. Woolery's departure came over a salary dispute with show creator Merv Griffin, and his contract was not renewed.[12][40] On December 28, 1981, Pat Sajak made his debut as the host of Wheel.[41] Griffin said that he chose Sajak for his "odd" sense of humor. NBC president and CEO Fred Silverman objected as he felt Sajak, who at the time of his hiring was the weatherman for KNBC-TV, was "too local" for a national audience. Griffin countered by telling Silverman he would stop production if Sajak was not allowed to become host, and Silverman acquiesced.[42]

text: Sajak hosted the daytime series until January 9, 1989, when he left to host a late-night talk show for CBS. Rolf Benirschke, a former placekicker in the National Football League, was chosen as his replacement and hosted for a little more than five months. Benirschke's term as host came to an end due to NBC's cancellation of the daytime Wheel after fourteen years, with its final episode airing on June 30, 1989.[9] When the newly formatted daytime series returned on CBS on July 17, 1989, Bob Goen became its host. The daytime program continued for a year and a half on CBS, then returned to NBC on January 14, 1991 and continued until September 20, 1991 when it was cancelled for a second and final time.[9]

text: Susan Stafford was the original hostess, serving in that role from the premiere until October 1982. Stafford was absent for two extended periods, once in 1977 after fracturing two vertebrae in her back and once in 1979 after an automobile accident.[9][43] During these two extended absences, former Miss USA Summer Bartholomew was Stafford's most frequent substitute, with model Cynthia Washington and comedian Arte Johnson also filling in for Stafford.[44]

text: After Stafford left to become a humanitarian worker,[35] over two hundred applicants signed up for a nationwide search to be her replacement.[45] Griffin eventually narrowed the list to three finalists, which consisted of Summer Bartholomew, former Playboy centerfold Vicki McCarty, and Vanna White.[46] Griffin gave each of the three women an opportunity to win the job by putting them in a rotation for several weeks after Stafford's departure.[12] In December 1982, Griffin named White as Stafford's successor, saying that he felt she was capable of activating the puzzle board letters (which is the primary role of the Wheel hostess) better than anyone else who had auditioned.[47] White became highly popular among the young female demographic,[48] and also gained a fanbase of adults interested in her daily wardrobe, in a phenomenon that has been referred to as "Vannamania".[45] White remained on the daytime series for the rest of the time it was on the air.

text: Sajak and White have starred on the syndicated version continuously as host and hostess, respectively, since it began, except for very limited occasions. During two weeks in January 1991, Tricia Gist, the girlfriend and future wife of Griffin's son Tony, filled in for White when she and her new husband, restaurateur George San Pietro, were honeymooning.[49] Gist returned for the week of episodes airing March 11 through 15, 1991, because White had a cold at the time of taping.[50] On an episode in November 1996, when Sajak proved unable to host the bonus round segment because of laryngitis, he and White traded places for that segment.[51][52] On the March 4, 1997 episode, Rosie O'Donnell co-hosted the third round with White after O'Donnell's name was used in a puzzle.[53]

text: On April 1, 1997, Sajak and Alex Trebek traded jobs for the day. Sajak hosted that day's edition of Jeopardy! in place of Trebek,[54] who presided over a special two-contestant Wheel celebrity match between Sajak and White, who were playing for the Boy Scouts of America and the American Cancer Society, respectively;[55] Lesly Sajak, Pat's wife, was the guest hostess for the day.[54] In January and February 2011, the show held a "Vanna for a Day" contest in which home viewers submitted video auditions to take White's place for one episode, with the winner determined by a poll on the show's website;[56] the winner of this contest, Katie Cantrell of Wooster, Ohio (a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design),[57] took White's place for the second and third rounds on the episode that aired March 24, 2011.

text: Announcers[edit]

text: Charlie O'Donnell was the program's first and longest tenured announcer. In 1980, NBC was discussing cancelling Wheel and O'Donnell agreed to take the position as announcer on The Toni Tennille Show. The network decided against the cancellation but O'Donnell decided to honor his commitment and left the series.[58] His replacement was Jack Clark, who added the syndicated series to his responsibilities when it premiered in 1983 and announced for both series until his death in July 1988.[59] Los Angeles radio personality M. G. Kelly was Clark's replacement, starting on the daytime series in August 1988 and on the syndicated series when its new season launched a month later.[60] Kelly held these positions until O'Donnell was able to return to the announcer position, doing so after his duties with Barris Industries came to an end at the end of the 1988–89 television season.[9] O'Donnell remained with the series until shortly before his death in November 2010.[61] Don Pardo, Don Morrow, and Johnny Gilbert have occasionally served as substitute announcers.[9]

text: After O'Donnell's death, the producers sought a permanent replacement, and a series of substitutes filled out the rest of the season, including Gilbert, John Cramer, Joe Cipriano, Rich Fields, Lora Cain and Jim Thornton. For the show's twenty-ninth season, which began in 2011, Thornton was chosen to be the new announcer for Wheel, and has been with the show ever since.[62]

text: Production staff[edit]

text: Wheel of Fortune typically employs a total of 100 in-house production personnel, with 60 to 100 local staff joining them for those episodes that are taped on location.[10] Griffin was the executive producer of the network version throughout its entire run, and served as the syndicated version's executive producer until his retirement in 2000. Since 1999, the title of executive producer has been held by Harry Friedman, who had shared his title with Griffin for his first year,[63] and had earlier served as a producer starting in 1995.[3]

text: John Rhinehart was the program's first producer, but departed in August 1976 to become NBC's West Coast Daytime Program Development Director. Afterwards, his co-producer, Nancy Jones, was promoted to sole producer, and served as such until 1995, when Friedman succeeded her.[3] In the 15th syndicated season in 1997, Karen Griffith and Steve Schwartz joined Friedman as producers. They were later promoted to supervising producers, with Amanda Stern occupying Griffith's and Schwartz's former position.[63]

text: The show's original director was Jeff Goldstein, who was succeeded by Dick Carson (a brother of Johnny Carson) in 1978.[9] Mark Corwin, who had served as associate director under Carson, took over for him upon his retirement at the end of the 1998–99 season, and served as such until he himself died in July 2013 (although episodes already taped before his death continued airing until late 2013).[64] Jeopardy! director Kevin McCarthy,[65] Corwin's associate director Bob Cisneros,[66] and Wheel and Jeopardy! technical director Robert Ennis[67] filled in at various points until Cisneros became full-time director in November 2013.[68] Ennis returned as guest director for the weeks airing October 13 through 17 and November 17 through 21, 2014, as Cisneros was recovering from neck surgery at the time of taping.[69][70] With the start of the 33rd season on September 14, 2015, Ennis was promoted to full-time director.[71]

text: Production[edit]

text: Wheel of Fortune is owned by Sony Pictures Television (previously known as Columbia TriStar Television, the successor company to original producer Merv Griffin Enterprises).[72] The production company and copyright holder of all episodes to date is Califon Productions, Inc., which like SPT has Sony Pictures for its active registered agent, and whose name comes from a New Jersey town where Griffin once owned a farm.[73] The rights to distribute the show worldwide are owned by CBS Television Distribution, into which original distributor King World Productions was folded in 2007.[74]

text: The show was originally taped in Studio 4 at NBC Studios in Burbank.[75] Upon NBC's 1989 cancellation of the network series, production moved to Studio 33 at CBS Television City in Los Angeles, where it remained until 1995.[76] Since then, the show has occupied Stage 11 at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City.[77] Some episodes are also recorded on location, a tradition which began with two weeks of episodes taped at Radio City Music Hall in late 1988.[78] Recording sessions usually last for five or six episodes in one day.[10]

text: Set[edit]

text: Various changes have been made to the basic set since the syndicated version's premiere in 1983. In 1996, a large video display was added center stage, which was then upgraded in 2003 as the show began the transition into high-definition broadcasting. In the mid-1990s, the show began a long-standing tradition of nearly every week coming with its own unique theme. As a result, in addition to its generic design, the set also uses many alternate designs, which are unique to specific weekly sets of themed programs. The most recent set design was conceived by production designer Renee Hoss-Johnson, with later modifications by Jody Vaclav.[1] Previous set designers included Ed Flesh[79] and Dick Stiles.[1]

text: The first pilot used a vertically mounted wheel which was often difficult to see on-screen. Flesh, who also designed the sets for The $25,000 Pyramid and Jeopardy!, designed the wheel mechanism. Originally made mostly of paint and cardboard,[79] the modern wheel mechanism is framed on a steel tube surrounded with Plexiglas and more than 200 lighting instruments, and is held by a stainless steel shaft with roller bearings. Altogether, the wheel weighs approximately 2,400 pounds (1,100 kg).[10]

text: The show's original puzzle board had three rows of 13 manually operated trilons, for a total of 39 spaces. On December 21, 1981, a larger board with 48 trilons in four rows (11, 13, 13 and 11 trilons) was adopted. This board was surrounded by a double-arched border of lights which flashed at the beginning and end of the round. Each trilon had three sides: a green side to represent spaces not used by the puzzle, a blank side to indicate a letter that had not been revealed, and a side with a letter on it.[23] While the viewer saw a seamless transition to the next puzzle, with these older boards in segments where more than one puzzle was present, a stop-down of taping took place during which the board was wheeled offstage and the new puzzle loaded in by hand out of sight of the contestants. On February 24, 1997, the show introduced a computerized puzzle board composed of 52 touch-activated monitors in four rows (12 on the top and bottom rows, 14 in the middle two).[10] To illuminate a letter during regular gameplay, the hostess touches the right edge of the monitor to reveal it.[80] The computerized board obviated the stop-downs, allowing tapings to finish quicker at a lower cost to the production company.

text: Although not typically seen by viewers, the set also includes a used letter board that shows contestants which letters are remaining in play, a scoreboard that is visible from the contestants' perspective, and a countdown clock.[81][82] The used letter board is also used during the bonus round, and in at least one case, helped the contestant to see unused letters to solve a difficult puzzle.[83]

text: Music[edit]

text: Alan Thicke composed the show's original theme, which was titled "Big Wheels". In 1983, it was replaced by Griffin's own composition, "Changing Keys",[84] to allow him to derive royalties from that composition's use on both the network and syndicated versions. Steve Kaplan became music director starting with the premiere of the 15th syndicated season in 1997, and continued to serve as such until he was killed when the Cessna 421C Golden Eagle he was piloting crashed into a home in Claremont, California, in December 2003.[85][86][87] His initial theme was a remix of "Changing Keys", but by the 18th syndicated season (2000–01), he had replaced it with a composition of his own, which was titled "Happy Wheels".[88] Since 2006, music direction has been handled by Frankie Blue and John Hoke.[1] Themes they have written for the show include a remix of "Happy Wheels" and an original rock-based composition.[88]

text: In addition to "Changing Keys", Griffin also composed various incidental music cues for the syndicated version which were used for announcements of prizes in the show's early years. Among them were "Frisco Disco" (earlier the closing theme for a revival of Jeopardy! which aired in 1978 and 1979),[89] "A Time for Tony" (whose basic melody evolved into "Think!", the longtime theme song for Jeopardy![90]), "Buzzword" (later used as the theme for Merv Griffin's Crosswords), "Nightwalk", "Struttin' on Sunset", and an untitled vacation cue.[88]

text: Audition process[edit]

text: Anyone at least 18 years old has the potential to become a contestant through Wheel of Fortune's audition process. Exceptions include employees and immediate family members of CBS Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, or any of their respective affiliates or subsidiaries; any firm involved in supplying prizes for the show; and television stations that broadcast Wheel and/or Jeopardy!, their sister radio stations, and those advertising agencies that are affiliated with them. Also ineligible to apply as contestants are individuals who have appeared on a different game show within the previous year, three other game shows within the past ten years, or on any version of Wheel of Fortune itself.[91]

text: Throughout the year, the show uses a custom-designed Winnebago recreational vehicle called the "Wheelmobile" to travel across the United States, holding open auditions at various public venues. Participants are provided with entry forms which are then drawn randomly. Individuals whose names are drawn appear on stage, five at a time, and are interviewed by traveling host Marty Lublin. The group of five then plays a mock version of the speed-up round, and five more names are selected after a puzzle is solved. Everyone who is called onstage receives a themed prize, usually determined by the spin of a miniature wheel. Auditions typically last two days, with three one-hour segments per day.[92] After each Wheelmobile event, the "most promising candidates" are invited back to the city in which the first audition was held, to participate in a second audition. Alternatively, a participant may submit an audition form with a self-shot video through the show's website to enter an audition. Contestants not appearing on stage at Wheelmobile events have their applications retained and get drawn at random to fill second-level audition vacancies. At the second audition, potential contestants play more mock games featuring a miniature wheel and puzzle board, followed by a 16-puzzle test with some letters revealed. The contestants have five minutes to solve as many puzzles as they can by writing in the correct letters. The people who pass continue the audition, playing more mock games which are followed by interviews.[93][94]

text: Broadcast history[edit]

text: Wheel of Fortune premiered on January 6, 1975, at 10:30 am (9:30 Central) on NBC. Lin Bolen, then the head of daytime programming, purchased the show from Griffin to compensate him for canceling the original Jeopardy! series, which had one year remaining on its contract. Jeopardy! aired its final episode on the Friday before Wheel's premiere. The original Wheel aired on NBC, in varying time slots between 10:30 am and noon, until June 30, 1989. Throughout that version's run, episodes were generally 30 minutes in length, except for six weeks of shows aired between December 1975 and January 1976 which were 60 minutes in length. NBC announced the cancellation of the show in August 1980, but it stayed on the air following a decision to cut the duration of The David Letterman Show from 90 to 60 minutes.[58] The network Wheel moved to CBS on July 17, 1989, and remained there until January 14, 1991.[9] After that, it briefly returned to NBC, replacing Let's Make a Deal,[95] but was canceled permanently on September 20 of that year.[9]

text: The daily syndicated version of Wheel premiered on September 19, 1983, preceded by a series of episodes taped on location at the Ohio State Fair and aired on WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio.[96] From its debut, the syndicated version offered a larger prize budget than its network counterpart.[41] The show came from humble beginnings: King World chairmen Roger, Michael, and Robert King could initially find only 50 stations that were willing to carry the show, and since they could not find affiliates for the syndicated Wheel in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago, Philadelphia was the largest market in which the show could succeed in its early days. Only nine stations carried the show from its beginning,[97] but by midseason it was airing on all 50 of the stations that were initially willing to carry it, and by the beginning of 1984 the show was available to 99 percent of television households. Soon, Wheel succeeded Family Feud as the highest-rated syndicated show,[9] and at the beginning of the 1984–85 season, Griffin followed up on the show's success by launching a syndicated revival of Jeopardy!, hosted by Alex Trebek.[98] The syndicated success of Wheel and Jeopardy! siphoned ratings from the period's three longest-running and most popular game shows, Tic-Tac-Dough, The Joker's Wild, and Family Feud, to the point that all three series came to an end by the fall of 1986. At this point, Wheel had the highest ratings of any syndicated television series in history,[41] and at the peak of the show's popularity, over 40 million people were watching five nights per week. The series, along with companion series Jeopardy!, remained the most-watched syndicated program in the United States until dethroned by Judge Judy in 2011.[99] The program has become America's longest-running syndicated game show and its second-longest in either network or syndication, second to the version of The Price Is Right which began airing in 1972. The syndicated Wheel has become part of the consciousness of over 90 million Americans, and awarded a total of over $200 million in cash and prizes to contestants.[10]

text: The popularity of Wheel of Fortune has led it to become a worldwide franchise, with over forty known adaptations in international markets outside the United States.[10] Versions of the show have existed in such countries as Australia,[100] Denmark,[101] France,[102] Germany,[103] Italy,[104] Malaysia,[105] New Zealand,[106] the Philippines,[107] Poland,[108] Russia,[109] Spain,[110], United Kingdom and Vietnam (Chiec Non Ky Dieu).[111] The American version of Wheel has honored its international variants with an occasional theme of special weeks known as "Wheel Around the World", the inaugural episode of which aired when the 23rd syndicated season premiered on September 12, 2005.[112]

text: Between September 1997 and January 1998, CBS and Game Show Network concurrently aired a special children's version of the show titled Wheel 2000. It was hosted by David Sidoni, with Tanika Ray providing voice and motion capture for a virtual reality hostess named "Cyber Lucy".[113] Created by Scott Sternberg,[113] the spin-off featured special gameplay in which numerous rules were changed. For example, the show's child contestants competed for points and prizes instead of cash, with the eventual winner playing for a grand prize in the bonus round.[114]

text: Reception[edit]

text: Wheel of Fortune has long been one of the highest-rated programs on U.S. syndicated television. It was the highest-rated show in all of syndication before it was dethroned by Two and a Half Men in the 28th season (2010–11).[115][116] The syndicated Wheel shared the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game/Audience Participation Show with Jeopardy! in 2011, and Sajak won three Daytime Emmys for Outstanding Game Show Host—in 1993, 1997, and 1998. In a 2001 issue, TV Guide ranked Wheel number 25 among the 50 Greatest Game Shows of All Time,[117] and in 2013, the magazine ranked it number 2 in its list of the 60 greatest game shows ever, second only to Jeopardy![5] In August 2006, the show was ranked number 6 on GSN's list of the 50 Greatest Game Shows.[118]

text: Wheel was the subject of many nominations in GSN's Game Show Awards special, which aired on June 6, 2009.[119] The show was nominated for Best Game Show, but lost to Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?; Sajak and White were nominated for Best Game Show Host, but lost to Deal or No Deal's Howie Mandel; and O'Donnell was considered for Best Announcer but lost to Rich Fields from The Price Is Right. One of the catchphrases uttered by contestants, "I'd like to buy a vowel", was considered for Favorite Game Show Catch Phrase, but lost to "Come on down!", the announcer's catchphrase welcoming new contestants to Price. The sound effect heard at the start of a new regular gameplay round won the award for Favorite Game Show Sound Effect. The sound heard when the wheel lands on Bankrupt was also nominated. Despite having been retired from the show for nearly a decade by that point, "Changing Keys" was nominated for Best Game Show Theme Song. However, it lost to its fellow Griffin composition, "Think!" from Jeopardy![120]

text: A hall of fame honoring Wheel of Fortune is part of the Sony Pictures Studios tour, and was introduced on the episode aired May 10, 2010.[121] Located in the same stage as the show's taping facility, this hall of fame features memorabilia related to Wheel's syndicated history, including retired props, classic merchandise, photographs, videos, and a special case dedicated to White's wardrobe.[122] Two years later, in 2012, the show was honored with a Ride of Fame on a double decker tour bus in New York City.[123]

text: Merchandise[edit]

text: Numerous board games based on Wheel of Fortune have been released by different toy companies. The games are all similar, incorporating a wheel, puzzle display board, play money and various accessories like Free Spin tokens. Milton Bradley released the first board game in 1975. In addition to all the supplies mentioned above, the game included 20 prize cards to simulate the "shopping" prizes of the show, with prizes ranging in value from $100 to $3,000. Two editions were released, with the only differences being the box art and the included books of puzzles. Other home versions were released by Pressman Toy Corporation, Tyco/Mattel, Parker Brothers, Endless Games, and Irwin Toys.[124]

text: Additionally, several video games based on the show have been released for personal computers, the Internet, and various gaming consoles spanning multiple hardware generations. Most games released in the 20th century were published by GameTek, which produced a dozen Wheel games on various platforms, starting with a Nintendo Entertainment System game released in 1987 and continuing until the company closed in 1998 after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.[125] Subsequent games were published by Hasbro Interactive and its acquirer Infogrames/Atari; Sony Online Entertainment, THQ and Ubisoft.[126]

text: Wheel has also been licensed to International Game Technology for use in its slot machines. The games are all loosely based on the show, with contestants given the chance to spin the wheel to win a jackpot prize. Since 1996, over 200 slot games based on the show have been created, both for real-world casinos and those on the Internet. With over 1,000 wins awarded in excess of $1,000,000 and over $3 billion in jackpots delivered, Wheel has been regarded as the most successful slots brand of all time.[127]

text: Notes[edit]

text:
Jump up ^ The simplified title is often used by host Pat Sajak on-air and has been used instead of the full title in numerous promotional materials for the show.

Jump up ^  If a contestant cannot spin the wheel due to a physical limitation or disability, he/she is accompanied by a "designated spinner," a friend or family member who spins for him/her but is otherwise not involved in the game.[11]

Jump up ^ Sajak: "I'll give the wheel a final spin, and ask you to give me a letter. If it's in the puzzle, you have three seconds to solve it. Vowels are worth nothing, consonants are worth...[wedge amount], we'll add $1,000 to that, [dollar amount] apiece."

Jump up ^ The jackpot wedge was originally in round 3,[27] was moved to round 2 at the start of the 18th syndicated season in 2000,[22] and after that moved to round 1 from 2009 to 2013.[28]

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