Mike Sell's celebrating 100 year of potato chips

Around the same time Wilbur and Orville Wright were introducing the world to manned flight and Charles Kettering was working on the self-starting automobile ignition, Daniel W. Mikesell was trying to make his way in the business world.

Eventually, he found potato chips, and if he didn’t exactly invent them, he had an early hand in perfecting one of the world’s snack food staples.

Mikesell — changed the name of the company in 1925 to Mike-Sell’s as a play on words.

This year, the company is celebrating its 100th year making chips, and still makes them in Dayton, at 333 Leo St.

“We produce all our potato and kettle chips here,” said Luke Mapp, the great-grandson of Mikesell and the company’s sales and marketing administrator. “In Indiana, we have puff corn and cheese corn. We’ve had many expansions here, but when we needed room, we wanted to expand our footprint. So we moved to Indianapolis. We made some chips over there at one time, but moved them back here.”

That Tri-Sum held a 100th anniversary celebration two years ago does not deter Luke Mapp from guessing his company is the oldest continuous potato chip operation in the world. Not only that, Mike-Sell’s continues to be made in Dayton, while Tri-Sum farmed out its operation to Wooster, Ohio, and has the bags of chips shipped back East.