By Marcus Harun
NBC News
Between noon and 2 p.m. Americans nationwide have their midday meal: lunch. But years ago it used to be a much bigger meal called dinner.
New York City changed that.
In the 1900s, New York was industrializing very quickly and the work culture was changing. Bosses were stricter with work schedules and workers only had a half-hour to eat at midday. Employees no longer had the time to go home to eat their family meal, so dinner was pushed to the evening. As a result, a high-speed midday meal called ?quick lunch? was born.
In a new exhibit, the New York Public Library tracks the evolution of lunch over the past 150 years. ?Lunch Hour NYC,? on display now through February 2013, is complete with a restored version of an automat, an automatic restaurant that serves fresh food vending machine-style.? Workers would rush to the automat and grab anything they could afford and ran back to work.
Continue reading?NYC, automats created lunch as we know it?on NBCNews.com.
