WEBVTT - Popcorn 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:14.000 of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:17.079 Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, did you know 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:19.600 that I'm kind of obsessed with popcorn? No? I did 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:22.200 not know this. I love popcorn. I love it too, 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:25.040 like I love love it. We talked about it behind 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:29.520 the scenes. Yeah, let's do I you know, late lately, 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:31.440 on and off the last couple of years, I've been 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:34.279 looking at whether or not I should buy a glazing 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:38.440 machine to do like, oh fancy one theme park style 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:42.360 popcorn fun. I always back off of it and in 0:00:42.400 --> 0:00:44.880 a moment of like, you don't need that. Part of 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:46.960 it is because there's only one person in my house 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:49.879 that eats popcorn. But the bottom line is that this 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:52.600 and a couple other things have made me think about 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:56.600 like popcorn. And we'll talk about it in the course 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:58.600 of the episode. But a lot of like what we 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:03.279 know about popcorn words, early phases, or what gets repeated, 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:07.160 a lot is flat out false, right, so, at least 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:09.240 in modern culture. So I thought it would be fun 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:13.039 to pick apart popcorn through the ages, because it goes 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:16.560 back very far but was not necessarily as prevalent in 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:20.040 place as we have been told it was. And then 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:24.520 we'll talk about how it has become a huge industry. Yeah. 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:26.800 I had not thought about the economics of why it 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:31.080 is such a profit industry, but now I have, so 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:34.319 we'll talk about all of that today. Yeah. So the 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:37.960 use of the word corn in historical contexts, at least 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:40.560 some of the time, it can be a little deceiving 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:45.200 because corn is a word that has historically been used 0:01:45.280 --> 0:01:50.800 more generally to describe all kinds of grain crops. So 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:56.400 today corn, I want to say the big lump with knobs, 0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:59.120 but that's from so long ago on the Internet, it's 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:03.360 already a very dated reference, just the thing you know 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:08.919 with ears. But corn in translation of the Bible, as 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:13.680 having been in Egypt, that was probably barley. Similarly, in Britain, 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:16.280 the word corn has been used to refer to crops 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:19.720 that could include both wheat and oats. So if you're 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:23.200 reading really old historical documents and there's a reference to corn, 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:29.240 it might not mean the relative of grass specifically that 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:33.400 we call corn today. Yes, because corn is grass. Corn 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:38.880 is grass. As for another reference that cuts a little deep, 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:41.280 but it's fine. I feel like many of our listeners 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:43.839 will get it. The corn that we think of today 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:47.160 using that word is a native plant species to the 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:51.120 Americas that, as Tracy said, related to grass and popping 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:54.799 corn is a specific type of maize, which is different 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:56.760 from the corn you would eat, of course, as corn 0:02:56.760 --> 0:02:59.160 on the cob or in corn dishes where you eat 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:03.320 the intact popping corn has a husk that is four 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:08.000 times thicker than those other varieties, and popcorn predates the 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:11.760 other corn types, although they are all the same species, 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:15.840 so you could have flour corn, podcorn, sweetcorn, dent corn, 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:19.840 and flint corn. They're all very close genetic matches to popcorn, 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:24.639 but slightly different that were developed over time as crops 0:03:24.720 --> 0:03:28.080 for their edibility, and according to Andrew Smith in his 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:31.560 nineteen ninety nine book Popped Culture quote, by the time 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:34.880 Europeans encountered the New World in the late fifteenth century, 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:38.520 maze was already a domesticated plant that did not grow 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:44.280 in the wild. Without human cultivation, maze did not survive yees. So, 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:48.520 just to recap maze one of the many many plants 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:54.800 native to the Americas cultivated by indigenous people now enjoyed 0:03:54.800 --> 0:04:00.600 world worldwide. Yes, the science of how corn pops really 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:04.040 pretty simple. That thick wall of the kernel encases a 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.800 little pocket of starch and moisture, and when the corn 0:04:07.880 --> 0:04:12.520 is heated up, that moisture inside causes the starch to liquefy. 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:16.400 Just as boiling water expands, so does that liquefied starch, 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.479 and it gets that builds up enough pressure to break 0:04:19.520 --> 0:04:24.120 that outer shell, rapidly expanding and re solidifying into the 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:29.360 fluffy white popcorn that we're familiar with today. When popcorn 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:32.919 is grown, every step of the process is designed to 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:37.039 ensure that you get that fluffy, popped finish. It is 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:40.719 cured on the stalk and then dried until it reaches 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:45.799 fourteen percent moisture for a long time. The oldest example 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:49.040 of popcorn ever found was estimated to be four thousand 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:52.640 years old. And these are small ears that were found 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:55.560 in the bat cave of Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:58.840 in the late nineteen forties and early nineteen fifties. And 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:01.960 we say these are small ears, we're talking about two 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:05.279 inches long as the largest of the collected specimens. The 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:08.640 smallest was reported as smaller than a penny, even today, 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:12.599 if you grow popcorn, those ears are smaller than the 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:15.359 other kinds of corn we've talked about, but not quite 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:19.080 this tiny, So in any case, very dissimilar from the 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:21.120 ears of corn that you might see today. But then 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:25.400 in twenty ten, far older samples of popcorn were found 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:28.560 in Peru, and these were dated to six thy seven 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:31.880 hundred years ago, and they're really interesting because in that 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:35.000 case the popcorn appears to have been popped while still 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:40.480 on the cob, not from separated kernels. Delores Piperno, who 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:44.520 at the time was Curator of New World Archaeology at 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:47.720 the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, d C. 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:51.840 Co authored a paper on these samples that was published 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:55.840 in twenty twelve. It was titled pre Ceramic Maize from 0:05:56.080 --> 0:06:01.080 Paradonis and Juacapria to Peru. One in interesting conclusion in 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:05.520 this paper was the statement quote, given the scarcity and 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:11.719 discontinuous stratigraphic presence of maize macro fossils and microfossils at 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:15.840 Paradonis and Juaca Prieta and at other pre ceramic sites 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:19.320 in the region, we infer that this crop, both its 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:23.679 popcorn and flowery forms, was not a primary food staple 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:27.880 in the local diet before about forty five hundred to 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:31.480 forty two hundred CALBP. So, just in case folks aren't 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:35.240 familiar with that terminology, BP is before the present and 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:41.560 calb P is calibrated before the present. Yeah, that's a 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:45.039 type of year dating that you'll see used in a 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:49.479 lot of archaeological papers. But although popcorn wasn't, according to 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:53.080 that paper, a particularly major part of the agriculture of Peru, 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:57.120 it is now believed that popcorn was being actively cultivated 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:00.360 by people of the Americas in other places as far 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:04.159 back as nine thousand years ago. Paperno gave a statement 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:07.080 in the press when this whole article was published and 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:10.720 became very popular for a minute, that it was cultivated 0:07:10.760 --> 0:07:14.400 from a wild grass known as tiacinde. People that couldn't 0:07:14.400 --> 0:07:18.120 grow it likely traded for it. This earlier version of 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:22.080 popcorn was also likely closer to what's called parched corn today, 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:25.440 so in some cases it wasn't popping exactly, but it 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:28.360 was being used in a way that it was dry heated, 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:30.560 so it would puff up slightly and become like a 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:35.440 crunchy thing. The Aztec culture is often invoked in popcorn 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:39.200 discussion and for good reason. Popcorn was used as food 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:43.960 and also as part of ceremonial practices. When conquistador Hernan 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.520 Cortes first came in contact with the Aztecs, which as 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:51.840 we know, would ultimately lead to the culture's destruction, he 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:56.360 became the first European to see popcorn and noted its 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:59.560 use for eating, as well as being strung on garlands 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:02.800 that were used as jewelry and headdresses and as decoration. 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:07.920 The automatopoetic word used by the Aztecs to represent the 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:12.680 sound of the corn popping was totapoka. Popcorn was also 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:17.240 closely associated with the Aztec ring god Toscato. A Franciscan 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:20.760 friar named Bernardino de Sahagun, who traveled to the Americas 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:23.360 in the fifteen twenties to convert the indigenous people there, 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.960 wrote of popcorn quote, they scattered parched corn called momahito, 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:31.240 a kind of corn which bursts when parched and discloses 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:34.720 its contents and makes itself look like a very white flower. 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:38.160 They said these were hailstones given to the god of water. 0:08:38.720 --> 0:08:42.400 Now that's an interesting quote because some translations of Sahagun's 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:45.400 words in this passage omit that whole reference to the 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:47.880 god of water, so it's not sure if a translator 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:52.360 added it later. Some translations described the corn grains instead 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:55.120 as simply being like scattered dice, and there's no mention 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:58.520 of a deity. Sahagoon made the effort to learn and 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.680 understand the Nahua language that he encountered, and to work 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:04.520 with members of the Aztec culture and gathering information for 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:07.880 his book General History of the Things of New Spain. 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:12.640 Jesuit missionary Bernabe Cobo, who visited Peru in the early 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:17.440 sixteen hundreds, also wrote of the practice of eating popcorn there. Quote, 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:20.600 they toast a certain kind of corn until it bursts. 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:25.439 That corn, which was used in confection, was called pisancaia. 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:30.319 The Spanish naturalist Felipe de Azara described a grain he 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:33.520 encountered in the Americas in the late seventeen hundreds this way. 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:37.040 Quote it is boiled in fat or oil, the grains 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:41.000 burst without becoming detached, and their results of superb bouquet, 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:43.840 fit to adorn a lady's hair at night without anyone 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:47.040 knowing what it was. I have often eaten these burst 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.680 grains and found them very good. So that's obviously an 0:09:50.720 --> 0:09:54.120 example of them being popped on the cob. One of 0:09:54.120 --> 0:09:57.000 the reasons that popcorn became a staple in so many 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:01.160 American cultures over time is its longevity. Unpopped kernels or 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:05.120 dried cobs of them keep for a very very long time, 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:09.360 so they can travel and store really easily. As evidence 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:13.280 of that longevity, botanist Thomas Harper good Speed, founder of 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.560 the Botanical Gardens at University of California, was given a 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:20.000 gift by a colleague from Chile in the late nineteen thirties. 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:24.720 It was pre Inca popcorn, and good Speed's curiosity about 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:27.480 them eventually got the better of him, and he tried 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:30.800 popping them. In nineteen forty one, he published a book 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.240 titled Plant Hunters in the Andes, and he shared the results, 0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:37.680 writing quote, one evening at home in Berkeley, it occurred 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:40.040 to me to try an experiment with my kernels of 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:43.280 pre inca popcorn. I placed a few on a pie 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:46.800 tin and heated them on the electric stove. Much to 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:49.680 my surprise, that corn, which had been gathered nearly a 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:53.280 thousand years ago, popped as readily as did last year's 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:55.319 crop that had come in a box from the shelves 0:10:55.320 --> 0:10:59.400 of the neighborhood cash and carry store. I'm curious how 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:02.600 he knew that it was pre inca popcorn, right, he's 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:07.040 taking that that person's word for it is yeah, okay, okay, 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:13.800 that's I had questions. And of course these travelers from 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:17.960 Europe brought maize back home with them. Spain and Italy 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:20.240 were the first places it was introduced, and then it 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:22.679 made its way to Turkey. But for a long time 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:26.040 it was used to feed animals and not humans. There 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:29.240 were very few instances of anyone in Europe trying to 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:33.079 pop it. When it got to Asia, also through Spanish colonists, 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:35.800 it was adopted more readily as a food for people, 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.720 including in its popped form. Yeah. I saw one mention 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:42.640 of like this one place in Romania that there may 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:45.000 be evidence that it had been popped at one point. 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:50.960 And of course, obviously people eventually did adopt maize and 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:53.640 maize products into their stuff. That's why we have things 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:58.000 like polenta, but not really into it initially. While you 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:01.240 have probably heard that popcorn was served at the first 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:04.920 Thanksgiving in Plymouth Colony as belooney, there is no evidence 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:07.840 to support that claim. There's a lot about the first 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:14.560 thanksgiving story that there are, and specifically the idea of 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:20.920 indigenous people giving colonists popcorn comes up in so much 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:26.280 literature that book I mentioned just a moment ago. It 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:29.560 goes through like this long list from like everyone from 0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:32.360 like Jane Adams writing about it to I think Thau 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:35.120 at one point, like all of these people that perpetuated 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:37.720 this myth and made it part of that like kind 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:43.000 of fuzzy, more lovable story of how those encounters worked. 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:50.400 And it's like there's there's literally nothing to support, but 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:54.840 there was some mention of popcorn from colonists in the 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:58.480 mid sixteen hundreds. John Winthrop Junior made a report to 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:01.679 the Royal Society of London in sixteen sixty two that 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:05.240 included popping corn in his description of the ways that 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:08.800 Native Americans used maize, noting that they seemed to turn 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:12.640 inside out and become flower like, but he also described 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:15.440 the resulting puffs not being eaten as they were the 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:18.400 way we think of popcorn, but being ground after that 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:22.320 or beaten into a meal. One hundred years later, Ben 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:25.720 Franklin described a similar process, with the popping being done 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:28.320 in a large iron pot with sand and then the 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:31.640 sand being sifted off before the pounding into the meal step. 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:35.160 But popcorn among the indigenous people of the East coast 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:39.120 of North America doesn't really appear to have been a 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:42.200 very big thing. It was more work to grow and 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:44.800 harder to use than other forms of maize, so it 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:46.760 kind of seems like it really didn't get a lot 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:50.560 of favor. Coming up, we'll talk about reasons. It's tricky 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:53.440 to figure out exactly how popcorn got a start in 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:59.200 the United States as a nation different from the Americas 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:02.480 as a region. We'll take a quick sponsor break before 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:15.559 we get to that. Because popcorn is inexpensive and as 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:19.080 we've said, long lasting, it became somewhat of a novelty 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:21.640 to a lot of folks in the early United States 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:24.480 once it had formed as a country, although there isn't 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:28.080 actually a mention of actual popcorn in writing until the 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:32.080 eighteen thirties, when it was mentioned in a periodical called Cultivator, 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:35.840 which was geared towards farmers. According to Andrew Smith in 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:39.280 pop Culture, it's possible that in terms of European descendant 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:42.600 inhabitants of the US and the eighteen hundreds, the practice 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:46.560 of popping corn might have even come from Africa. As 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:49.320 maze made its way across Europe in the fifteen hundreds, 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:52.720 it also moved south into Africa, but this is purely 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:55.600 a theory. The way maze spread, which was in some 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:59.000 cases tied to the slave trade, makes it actually pretty 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:02.240 hard to know who actually had it and who brought 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:05.280 the concept of popcorn into the culture of the US. 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:08.680 And of course there was popcorn in South America well 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:11.440 before any of this, so it may have just moved north. 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:15.080 But there's no real chain of evidence to clearly identify 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:19.120 how white men started popping popcorn rather than parching and 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:23.440 grinding it. The ways people popped popcorn in its early 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:27.480 adoption in the United States could vary a lot. Some 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:30.720 sound kind of arduous. There was a way similar to 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:33.880 how it would be done today by a lot of 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:38.080 folks using fat or oil in a kettle. Another method 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:41.680 was to toss kernels of popping corn into the hot 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:45.360 ashes from a fire and then all that give that 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:48.360 kind of a stir to get the kernels to pop pop. 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:53.480 That meant that you had to get the popped kernels 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:56.600 out from the ash to eat it. And I'm just 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.680 not seeing how you don't wind up with a mouthful 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:03.360 of ash. Yeah, that's a hard pass for me. Another 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:06.520 approach was a wire box method, where kernels could be 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:09.640 placed in a wire container that was held over a fire, 0:16:10.800 --> 0:16:13.160 though it may have taken a while to catch on. 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:16.760 Once popcorn was introduced to the US in its fluffy form, 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:20.600 it kind of became a fad. Just a decade after 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:24.320 that reference and cultivator, the word popcorn appeared in Bartlett's 0:16:24.360 --> 0:16:28.040 Dictionary of Americanism, so over a ten year period it 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:32.600 had gotten really really popular. Soon holidays celebrated in the 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:36.520 US started to have popcorn associated with them, and kind 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:39.520 of all holidays, right, like we sometimes think of popcorn 0:16:39.520 --> 0:16:41.360 garlands for Christmas. I don't think a lot of people 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:44.320 do that, but some still do, or like popcorn balls 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:47.359 at Halloween. But it also became part of Easter traditions, 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:51.360 just popcorn, not in its candied forms Halloween traditions, and 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.400 this eventually led to the development of the popcorn ball 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:57.400 that I just mentioned. So a mass of popcorn held 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:01.640 together by a sugarcoating not only eaten as a treat, 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:04.160 but they were also used as decor. In some cases, 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:06.720 you could even buy molds and gadgets that would help 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:10.840 shape candy coated popcorn into decorative shapes, so you could 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:14.240 make a little ornament by this. By the eighteen sixties, 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:18.639 popcorn recipes started appearing in cookbooks. They often included ways 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:21.320 to make sweet treats or desserts with it. It wasn't 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:24.920 so much savory stuff going on at that point. When 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:28.320 the steel plow was invented in the mid eighteen hundreds, 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:31.800 that made growing popcorn even easier, and the crop became 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:36.160 even more popular. Became easier to cut the stalks which 0:17:36.160 --> 0:17:39.160 were really starty. This is what led to the development 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:42.480 of the corn belts. It was during the latter half 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:46.280 of the eighteen hundreds that popcorn was also adopted by 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:51.520 healthy living advocates. Dietitian Ella Kellogg, the wife of John 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:55.639 Harvey Kellogg, used popcorn as a breakfast cereal, eating it 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:59.119 with milk. She thought popcorn should be incorporated as a 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:02.679 dish at just about any meal. At that point, popcorn 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:05.960 was readily available in just about every grocery, and it 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:09.600 was also routinely sold as a treat at sporting events 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:15.440 and circuses. In eighteen seventy five, Frederick J. Myers of Govington, Kentucky, 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:18.320 filed a patent for a corn popper that enabled the 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:21.560 user to keep from burning their hand the handle of 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:25.320 the device stayed cool to the touch. His improvement in 0:18:25.440 --> 0:18:28.879 corn poppers didn't involve any kind of revolutionary materials or 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:32.240 thermodynamic tricks. You could just detach the handle while the 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:34.840 corn was over the heat source and then reattach it 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:38.840 to pull the poppedcorn out. Ten years after Meyer's patent, 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:42.840 Charles Creeters enters the story, and he's a significant figure 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:47.199 in popcorn's US history. Creators owned a candy store, and 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:50.119 as he sought to expand his offerings, he ordered a 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:52.959 peanut roaster for his shop so he could sell fresh 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:58.040 roasted nuts alongside his candy. He didn't actually like the roaster, though, 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:00.280 and started taking it apart to see if he could 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:04.720 improve on it somehow. In the tinkering, Creators expanded his 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:07.960 vision to invent a new roaster instead of just trying 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:11.320 to fix the one he purchased and didn't like. Around 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:14.160 the same time, he realized he could design a machine 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:17.719 that would pop popcorn as well as roast peanuts, and 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:20.600 that he could use it to roast coffee beans. As well. 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:23.920 He ended up building roasters in a variety of sizes 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:28.080 to fit different needs. Creators used steam to run his machinery, 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:31.840 which gave consistent power and in the case of the popcorn, 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:35.360 that meant it would heat evenly and produce consistent batches 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:39.000 of white, fluffy popcorn. He popped that in a mixture 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:43.120 of lard and clarified butter. The steam was then used 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:46.480 to keep the popped popcorn warm. He was able to 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:49.560 add seasonings before popping, and that would stick to the 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:53.760 kernels as they exploded. Soon he was selling roasting machines 0:19:53.800 --> 0:19:58.360 to other entrepreneurs instead of selling candy. In eighteen ninety three, 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:03.400 Creators exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Popular 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:06.600 Mechanics reported on the popcorn machine on wheels that he 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:10.000 had on display, which was marketed to grocery stores, initially 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:11.879 as something that they could move in or out of 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:15.719 the building as proprietors wished. According to that write up 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:18.879 in Popular Mechanics quote, this machine was designed with the 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:21.919 idea of moving it about to any location where the 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:25.880 operator would be likely to do a good business. The apparatus, 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:28.480 which is light and strong and weighing, but four hundred 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:31.280 or five hundred pounds can be drawn readily by a 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:34.600 boy or by a small pony to any picnic ground, fair, 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:38.199 political rally, etc. And to many other places where a 0:20:38.240 --> 0:20:40.400 good business could be done for a day or two. 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:43.840 After kind of a slow start at the expo where 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:47.119 he couldn't get people interested, Creators just started making bags 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:50.879 of popcorn to give away, and then that freebee plus 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:54.280 the smell of popcorn popping, made the crowd show up. 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:57.480 He eventually started selling the popcorn, and he made a 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:00.320 nice sum over the course of the exposition, and the 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:03.639 success of his popcorn sales also inspired the sales of 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:07.160 his mobile popcorn machine, which he called the earn More, 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:11.360 and this launched an entirely new field of mobile food vending. 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:15.160 While people have sold food on foot for centuries, We've 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:17.840 talked about it so many times, this was new in 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:20.560 that the food could be prepared on the spot wherever 0:21:20.600 --> 0:21:25.120 the vendor went. Other manufacturers of nut roasting machines hustled 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:27.879 to get in on this new popcorn market by making 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:31.480 poppers similar to creets. The creater's company, by the way, 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:36.040 still exists today, and it still manufactures concession equipment of 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:40.320 all kinds. As Creaters was working on his popping machine, 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:44.600 commercially produced popcorn became available at retail. Up until the 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:48.440 eighteen eighties, people who made popcorn were usually growing their 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:51.600 own or getting it in places like farmer's markets, but 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:55.200 in the eighteen eighties the Albert Dickinson Company started offering 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:59.320 prepackaged popcorn with the branding names of Big Buster and 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:04.879 Little Bust. Similarly, other people besides Creators were working to 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:08.960 innovate in the corn popping arena. One of Creeter's employees, 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:11.640 C F. Dunbar, left the company to start his own 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:15.040 popcorn machine business, and he invented a machine that would 0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:18.560 pop the popcorn dry without any oil and then pass 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:22.359 it through an automated butter dispenser. The first patent for 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:25.240 a machine that would coat popcorn with a sugar glaze 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:28.119 to keep each popped kernel fresh was filed by a 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:32.320 man named James Voods. This machine kept those popkernels separate 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:34.919 from one another, so each one could dry with the 0:22:34.960 --> 0:22:39.360 coating without clumping up into a ball. Frederick and Lewis 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:43.160 Rookheim of Germany developed a hand held popper that gave 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:46.800 them the capability to flavor each small batch however they wished. 0:22:47.440 --> 0:22:52.159 The Rookheims are also responsible for introducing an enduring snack brand, 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:56.639 which is Crackerjack. Crackerjack, in case anybody in our listening 0:22:56.640 --> 0:23:00.159 audience has not had it, combines popcorn and peanuts. The 0:23:00.200 --> 0:23:04.480 molasses coating Crackerjack was such a huge hit that copycat 0:23:04.520 --> 0:23:08.560 recipes started showing up in cookbooks not long after its introduction. 0:23:09.720 --> 0:23:13.440 Once again, because of the low cost, popcorn has endured 0:23:13.440 --> 0:23:18.320 in popularity through various economic downturns. During the Great Depression, 0:23:18.440 --> 0:23:21.320 popcorn became one of the few treats that families could 0:23:21.320 --> 0:23:24.800 still afford. It was kind of an austerity luxury, and 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:27.840 it also meant that companies that sold popcorn fared better 0:23:27.920 --> 0:23:31.520 during the Great Depression than other industries as popcorn sales 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:35.480 continued to rise. The depression also led to one of 0:23:35.520 --> 0:23:38.600 the most common associations we have with popcorn, and that's 0:23:38.640 --> 0:23:42.119 being a movie theater snack. This was a cost effective 0:23:42.160 --> 0:23:45.040 way for theater owners to offer some kind of snack 0:23:45.240 --> 0:23:48.920 that overhead was very low. But not all theaters were 0:23:48.960 --> 0:23:52.320 on board with the popcorn boom. Initially, some of them 0:23:52.440 --> 0:23:56.520 feared rightfully as Anybody who has ever left a theater 0:23:56.800 --> 0:23:59.600 at the end of a movie has seen that it 0:23:59.600 --> 0:24:04.400 would make messes. Sometimes people intentionally make bigger messes with it. 0:24:04.960 --> 0:24:07.720 There had also just been a push within the industry 0:24:07.800 --> 0:24:11.480 to create a luxury experience that popcorn and other snacks 0:24:11.480 --> 0:24:15.400 couldn't really match with. But it was so popular already 0:24:15.440 --> 0:24:18.480 as a low cost snack that popcorn sellers started to 0:24:18.520 --> 0:24:21.920 pop up adjacent to theaters, having moved there from sporting 0:24:21.920 --> 0:24:25.760 events and carnivals, so patrons could buy a bag on 0:24:25.920 --> 0:24:30.159 their way into the theater. Eventually, theater owners recognized that 0:24:30.200 --> 0:24:33.400 they were losing a potential revenue stream and started offering 0:24:33.440 --> 0:24:38.159 popcorn in their establishments. In many theaters, this began as 0:24:38.200 --> 0:24:41.760 a rental arrangement with the vendors who had once been outside, 0:24:42.040 --> 0:24:45.399