History of the TV Dinner

Few food products so perfectly define an era as the TV dinner does the American 1950s. Frozen dinners had already been around for nearly a decade, but the name "TV Dinner" was a stroke of genius made by the Swanson Company. So who invented the TV dinner? That's where the story gets complicated.

Who Invented the TV Dinner? TV dinner was an original name, but it wasn't an original concept. Albert and Meyer Bernstein had been selling frozen dinners on compartmentalized aluminum trays since 1949. The company they formed in 1952, Quaker State Food Corporation, had sold about 2.5 million frozen dinners before Swanson even began marketing TV dinners. And since 1945, Maxson Food Systems had been providing "Strato-Plates" frozen meals to military and civilian aircraft.

Swanson's huge marketing campaign that targeted housewives with the phrase "I'm late, but dinner won't be!" has to this day obscured the role of other companies in the development of frozen dinners. Ironically, the history of TV dinners has also been obscured by the claims of a Swanson employee.

Most accounts of the history of TV dinners credit Gerry Thomas, a one-time Swanson salesman, as their inventor. As Thomas told it, in 1951 Swanson had a surplus of 520,000 pounds of Thanksgiving turkey. Lacking warehouse capacity for the meat, Thomas claimed, Swanson put the turkey in refrigerated railroad cars and asked their employees for a fast solution. Thomas credited himself with the invention and naming of the TV dinner.

However, there are some problems with Thomas' account. According to Karal Ann Marling's book As Seen on TV, TV dinners were introduced in October 1953, not 1951. Also, Swanson owned eight stories of ample freezer space. And when questioned in 2003 by the L.A. Times, Thomas described his railroad story as "a metaphor."

So who invented the TV dinner? Other Swanson employees say it was Gilbert and Clarke Swanson themselves. And as for the brilliant name, that was the responsibility of the marketing department.