According to Wikipedia, Pad Thai was invented in what part of the 20th century?

According to Wikipedia, Pad Thai was invented in the mid-20th century. Although rice noodles had been present in Thailand for much longer, the particular dish called Pad Thai is generally associated with twentieth-century nation-building and food policy.

Wikipedia describes stir-fried rice noodles as having been introduced to Thailand from China centuries earlier. That older noodle tradition is why it is misleading to say that every ingredient or technique in Pad Thai suddenly appeared in the twentieth century. The modern dish developed from those earlier influences and was given a distinctly Thai identity.

One account places its creation in the 1930s, during the government of Prime Minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram. His administration promoted symbols of national identity, including food, language, and public behavior. Another commonly repeated explanation connects Pad Thai’s wider rise with wartime shortages in the 1940s.

The exact origin story is not completely settled. Some food writers emphasize Thai-Chinese cooks and existing Chinese-style noodle traditions rather than a single government invention. Thus “mid-20th century” is the fair historical period answer, while claims that Pad Thai is either an ancient dish unchanged for centuries or a twenty-first-century invention are inaccurate.