The chocolate chip cookie, also known as the Toll House Cookie, was developed by Ruth Graves Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn near Whitman, Massachusetts, in 1930. She invented the cookie by accident. She was making chocolate cookies but ran out of regular baker's chocolate and substituted broken pieces of semi-sweet chocolate, assuming it would melt. It did not, and the cookie with chips of chocolate was born. (The restaurant, housed in a former toll house built in 1709, burned down in 1984.)

The standard version of the recipe can be found at Nestle Toll House Cookie Recipe.

More information can also be found at this website.