The credit for the invention of the hot dog is much disputed in Europe. Although the mention of sausages can be traced as far back as the 9th century B.C., both Frankfurt, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, claim the development of the hot dog or wiener in their cities in the 15th century.
The hot dog as we know it is probably a combination of recipes brought by butchers from the Old World, according to the American Hot Dog and Sausage Council.
The record of vendors in New York, selling "dachshund " sausages on a milk roll, are documented in the 1860s. In 1871, Charles Feltman, a German immigrant, is said to have sold 3,684 sausages on a roll during his first year of business as a vendor on Coney Island.
The hot dog we would recognize first appeared in St. Louis at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition.
A concessionaire, Anton Feuchtwanger, was lending white gloves to patrons as they consumed hot sausages. When most gloves were not returned, his brother-in-law, a baker, came up with the idea of a long, soft roll to cradle the sausage. This was the birth of the modern hot dog.
The term hot dog originated at the New York Polo Grounds in 1901. Vendors selling dachshund sausages from portable hot-water tanks would yell, "Get your dachshund sausages, they're red hot." A sports cartoonist, Tad Dorgan, needing an idea, drew a cartoon of barking dachshund sausages on rolls. Unable to spell "dachshund," Dorgan simply wrote "hot dog." The cartoon was so successful that from that point on, a sausage on a roll would be known as a hot dog.