Back in the day, Harry Husman made potato chips in his Laurel Street home after hoisting sacks of spuds to his second-floor kitchen by attaching a rope to the bumper of his car.

Today, Husman’s chips are mechanically cleaned, peeled, sliced, blown dry and fried to a uniform golden crispness in two to three minutes. Some 43 million potatoes a year are turned into chips shipped to stores from Dayton and Springfield, Ohio, to Lexington and Louisville, Ky.

Now, Cincinnati-based Husman’s Snack Foods Co. is celebrating with new store displays and giveaways – marking 95 years of satisfying generations of loyal snackers.

“We are happy to be able to provide quality products to consumers as we have been doing for nearly a century,” said Michele James, associate brand and sales manager for Husman’s.

A lot has changed since Harry Husman got his start. The company today produces cheese snacks, pretzels and popcorn along with the chips. And they come in versions including Original Flavor, Sweet N Sassy, Wavy, Sour Cream & Onion and Bar-B-Q.

Husman’s headquarters is still Cincinnati, but the chips are made at a factory in Berlin, Pennsylvania, and the company is owned by Pinnacle Food Inc. in Parsippany, New Jersey.

In 1919, a young Harry Husman was a salesman traveling to Cincinnati grocery stores to peddle paper bags and packing materials.

On several occasions, Harry would overhear customers asking for potato chips, and grocers explaining that the store was out and would receive the next shipment in a few days. Curiosity won over, and Harry began investigating the reason for the shortage on chips. What Harry learned was that grocers were buying the potato chips from out of town and had no control over supplies received.

Harry saw a need for a potato chip company that produced locally. And so, at age 24, he founded the Husman Potato Product Company.

The company would hand-deliver to people’s homes as well as local grocers. At one point customers could purchase potato chips in tins, and then return the tins for refills.

There was no automation in those days. Instead, workers hand-cut the potatoes, fried the chips in big kettles, and hand-packaged everything.

The kettles could accommodate just 50 pounds of potatoes an hour. It wasn’t until 1937 that Husman’s installed its first automatic potato chip fryer, raising the frying rate up to 800 pounds an hour.

Since potatoes are 80 percent water, it takes four pounds of raw potatoes to make one pound of potato chips. So 800 pounds of potatoes would produce about 200 pounds of chips.

Husman’s uses 43 million potatoes annually – about 12 acres of harvested potatoes per day from southeast Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

The first semiautomatic packaging machine in 1958 eliminated the need for workers packing products by hand. With an increase in demand and business still growing, Husman’s purchased a second automatic fryer in 1958 that allowed production rates to rise to 1,600 pounds an hour with four packing lines.

Today, the automated process still ends with the human touch. The final steps include salting and inspecting the chips for defects. After the chips pass inspection they’re seasoned, packaged and sent out to local distributors.

And, of course, e-commerce is involved today.

“We get a lot of faithful customers that have moved out of the area that stick to their local brand,” said Gerry Proctor, national account manager for Husman’s. “They’ll order online or over the phone to have (our chips) shipped to their homes.”