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. 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. 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. 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 , 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. 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. McDonald's era 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