Today, the most common way of making tea is by soaking pre-filled paper bags,

which prevent the leaves from getting into your drink. But it took one funny
misunderstanding for people to understand that this was a good idea.
Tea needs to be soaked in very hot water for its flavour to flow out and fill a cup.
Of course, back in the day, that might have meant putting the leaves in a cup and
drinking, hoping you do not swallow any in the process. Eventually, people hit
upon teapots with infusers, though this was just one potential solution.

The first tea bags appeared in the 1900s, in the US. They were
officially patented by Roberta Lawson and Mary Molaren in 1901, and they
hand-sewed bags to fill with tea. However, there is a popular legend that tells of a
New York tea merchant in 1908, Thomas Sullivan, and how, while not inventing
tea bags, he certainly showed the world they existed, albeit by accident.

Sullivan wanted to send out samples of his tea to customers, but putting them in
tin cans was too expensive in terms of shipping. So he hit upon the ‘new’ idea of
sewing the tea up in silk sample bags to ship out. But when all his customers saw
the bags, they did not even consider opening them up – they just put the silk bags
in the hot water, and found that the flavour did not change much. And so
Sullivan found customers that wanted more of his bagged tea.

Eventually, Sullivan heard that tea drinkers were not satisfied with the silk bags,
because the flavour was not leaching into the water well enough. In response, he
created a new set of tea bags using gauze, and with that, tea bags took the shape
of the common sight seen today, especially as other companies
began imitating this convenient drink in a bag.