Yummy Chocolate Through The Years

• 1765: Dr. James Baker and chocolate maker John Hannon founded the Walter Baker Chocolate Company in a mill on Neponset River, Massachusetts;

• 1849: The Italian Dominbro Ghirardelli began making chocolate in San Francisco during the Gold Rush;

• 1868: Parisian Etienne Guittard comes to California to start the Guittard Chocolate Company;

• 1871: American Milton Hershey founded his company in Pennsylvania when he was nineteen years old;

• 1875: After eight years of research and experiments, Daniel Peter of Switzerland created milk chocolate and sold his culinary invention to his neighbor, Henri Nestle.

• 1879: Rodolphe Lindt invented a refining process for chocolate called conching;

• 1896: The Fannie Farmer Cookbook introduced the recipe for chocolate brownies;

• 1907: Hershey's Kisses were introduced. So popular, they now produce more than 25 million Kisses per day.

• 1938: Nestle introduced the Crunch Bar, the first chocolate bar with crunchy crisps.

• 1939: Another first for Nestle when they created chocolate chips;

• WWII: Hershey created the Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar to be included in soldiers' rations as commissioned by the United States government;

• 1960: Alfred Hitchcock uses chocolate syrup to simulate blood in the infamous Psycho shower scene with actress Janet Leigh;

• Today: Hershey was commissioned by the U.S. government to create another soldiers' ration that can withstand high temperatures for consumption in the Persian Gulf. These "Desert Bars" are also sold for consumer survival kits.

Are you craving chocolate now?

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