Although a simple grain, popcorn’s place in America’s culture is fairly recent. In fact, if it weren’t for the Great Depression, popcorn might not have become as large of a phenomenon as it is today. Let’s take a closer look at popcorn’s fascinating history.
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Ancient History
Popcorn is a form of maize, not the sweet corn-on-the-cob that most people think of. It got its name from the sound it makes when it pops. No surprise there. The oldest ear of popcorn is about 5,600 years old, and was found in a cave in central New Mexico between 1948 and 1950. Popcorn has been found in burial sites across South America. 1,000 year old Popcorn found in Peru has been preserved so well that it still pops. Popcorn was integral to South American culture, especially the Aztecs. They used popcorn in worship ceremonials, wearing it as headdresses, necklaces, and ornaments. Early French explorers observed Iroquois popping popcorn in the early 1600s in the Great Lakes region, and it became a pre-cursor to the ordinary breakfast cereals that line the grocery store shelves today. Colonial families ate it in a bowl with milk and sugar, just like the corn flakes or rice crisps we eat today. Colonists also popped popcorn with crude poppers made of cylindrical thin sheets of iron, which resembled an animal cage.
19th Century
Because of popcorn’s low cost and fun shape, it has been used as holiday decor since the 1800’s. The word “popcorn” first appeared in Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms in 1838. The invention of the wire corn popper helped bring popcorn to households because it was the most convenient popper to date. Popcorn was first produced commercially across the United States in the 1840’s. Cracker Jack, made with peanuts, popcorn, and molasses, was invented by two German immigrants in the 1870’s. The first reference to popcorn in seed trade catalogs and farm papers was around 1880. Charles Cretors, a candy store owner, invented the first mobile popcorn machine powered by steam, which he showed off in 1893 at the World’s Exposition. Poets begin to write poems about popcorn. Scientists began to study popcorn and question why it pops. At the end of the century, popcorn was slowly becoming ingrained in our culture (no pun intended).
Great Depression
Believe it or not, theater owners didn’t want to sell popcorn inside at first. They saw popcorn as too messy and not quite fancy-pants enough for the high-brow atmosphere they were trying to create. During the Great Depression, however, that all changed. At about 5 to 10 cents a bag, popcorn was one of the few luxuries that families could afford. Popcorn vendors saw an opportunity to sell more maize by parking outside of theaters and selling to patrons as they went inside. As the Depression continued, and theaters that didn’t sell popcorn began to shut down, theater owners could no longer ignore the profits that popcorn brought in their doors. Theaters that got on the popcorn “bandwagon” thrived, while those that didn’t went out of business. In the early 1930’s American farmers began creating popcorn hybrids that were better suited to grow in the climate of the United States breadbasket.
WWII
Popcorn consumption increased significantly due to sugar rationing during WWII. Sugar was sent to the troops overseas, so Americans were forced to find alternate sources of sweeteners and snacks. Americans ate three times as much popcorn as they had before.
1950’s
The invention of the home television led to a drop in popcorn consumption and sales, as people began watching TV at home instead of at the theaters. Popcorn sales recovered as people began purchasing it in the store and enjoying at home.
1980’s
While the first microwave was invented in 1946, microwaves were not available for household use until the late 1960’s. Popcorn lovers would have to wait for more than 10 years before they could make popcorn in the microwave. Microwave popcorn was invented and mass-produced in the early 1980’s. Sporting events, fairs, concerts, carnivals, and especially movie theaters would not be the same without popcorn. It’s as “American” as apple pie and baseball. It’s as comforting as biscuits and gravy, potato chips, and tuna casserole. Popcorn’s rich and fascinating story is a deep part of America’s history and culture, and it is part of what makes America unique.
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Resources:
http://www.history.com/news/hungry-history/a-history-of-popcorn http://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/popcorn-history/ http://www.popcorn.org/ http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/nass/Popc//1980s/1982/Popc-01-15-1982.pdf http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/arts-culture/why-do-we-eat-popcorn-at-the-movies-475063/ http://www.factmonster.com/spot/popcorn1.html http://www.randomhistory.com/popcorn-history.html http://specialcollections.nal.usda.gov/popcorn-exhibit
Popcorn is there for the best moments. There’s that gargantuan tub of hot buttered popcorn at the movie theater. There’s that stale yet satisfying box of popcorn at the baseball game. There’s kettle corn at the fair and popcorn balls in the fall. But where did all this popcorn come from? Who invented popcorn? Or did someone just discover it, in which case, who discovered popcorn? And who invented microwavable popcorn? We’ve popped a lot of questions on popcorn, now let’s get some answers.
Popcorn has been around for a long, long time so it’s hard to say who exactly discovered it. Popcorn was invented in Mesoamerica thousands of years ago. Corn itself was cultivated about 9,000 years ago in Mesoamerica, and the earliest popcorn was discovered in Peru. It was a corn cob studded with puffed kernels. That popcorn likely dates back 6,700 years ago. Popcorn from about 5,000 years ago was also discovered in Mexico. Our first written description of popcorn comes from French explorers who witnessed Iroquois cooking kernels over heated sand.
The popcorn that Native peoples ate across the Americas was different from the fluffy butter bombs we eat today. It was more akin to parched corn—dried corn kernels fried in hot oil. Corn had to be cultivated for thousands of years to become the modern popcorn we’re used to today. Even then, modern fluffy popcorn was cooked in small batches over an open flame or stovetop.
Popcorn history took a turn in 1885 Chicago when a man named Charles Cretors built his popcorn popping machine. Crestors was a candy store owner who tinkered with a peanut roasting machine until he discovered a way to pop popcorn. He attached it to a horse and rode his horse-drawn popcorn wagon across the U.S.
So how did popcorn get from the open fire to horse-drawn buggies to your microwave? Microwavable popcorn was invented pretty much around the same time as the microwave itself. In 1945 Dr. Percy Spencer was working near a magnetron, a high-powered vacuum tube that generated microwaves, when he noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. Later he placed popcorn kernels near it and saw that they popped! That was the first microwaved popcorn. But it didn’t become a household product until a man named Jim Watkins created a prototype for actual microwave popcorn in the 1970s, and then Lawrence C. Brandberg and David W. Andreas of General Mills provided research that led to the first microwave popcorn bag around the same time.
Commercial microwave popcorn went on sale in grocery stores in 1981, sold by General Mills and Pillsbury. Those old school microwavable popcorn bags were sold either frozen or in the refrigerated section as they had real butter in them.
Some folks think that Orville Redenbacher invented popcorn. He did not, but he did create a kernel that expanded twice as much as any other. Whoever you want to say invented it, I’m just glad that there’s a big popcorn case at the movies that I can crawl into and fall asleep in when no one’s watching!
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