What is a frankfurter?

Most people know what a hotdog is. It’s a sausage in a roll. But do you know why it’s called a hotdog? (11) Well, the long red sausage which goes into a hotdog is called a frankfurter. It got its name from the German town Frankfurt. The sausages were very popular, but hot frankfurters were difficult to sell in crowds. (12) One man, Harry Stevens, had the job of feeding the crowds in baseball games. He had an idea. Why not put the frankfurters in long, hot bread rolls? This made them easy to sell. The "red hot" had a hot and attractive taste and became very popular. (13) But in 1903, an American cartoonist drew a long German sausage dog in place of the frankfurter so a frankfurter in a roll soon became known as a "hot dog". It was a joke, but some people really thought the sausages contained dog meat. For a while, sales of hotdogs failed, but not for long.