History of Popcorn Timeline

Before specialized commercial machinery, stovetop cooking remained the standard method for turning popcorn kernels into popped corn.

Through the 19th century, people generally popped kernels by hand on stovetops over an open flame.

John Russell Bartlett’s dictionary preserved an early printed record of the expression “popped corn,” marking its appearance in American English.

The term “popped corn” first appeared in John Russell Bartlett’s 1848 Dictionary of Americanisms.

In Chicago, Illinois, Charles Cretors invented the specialized popcorn machine used for commercial sales in 1885.

Cretors’s 1885 invention established the commercial popcorn machine as an alternative to popping kernels in a household pot or kettle.

By the turn of the century, Cretors had created and deployed street carts equipped with steam-powered popcorn makers.

Charles Cretors introduced his popcorn-machine invention at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

Image source: World's Columbian Exposition

Cretors’s steam-powered street carts brought freshly made popcorn into public commercial spaces at the turn of the 20th century.

Glen W. Dickinson Sr.’s 1938 installations helped establish popcorn machines as a feature of theater lobbies.

In 1938, Midwestern theater owner Glen W. Dickinson Sr. installed popcorn machines in the lobbies of his Dickinson theaters.

General Mills received the first patent for a microwave oven popcorn bag in 1981.

Following General Mills’s 1981 microwave-popcorn-bag patent, popcorn consumption increased as microwave preparation became more convenient.

At the Columbian Exposition, F. W. Rueckheim introduced molasses-flavored “Candied Popcorn,” described as the first caramel corn.

Louis Rueckheim slightly altered the candied-popcorn recipe and introduced it as Cracker Jack in 1896.

The defining preparation of the popular popcorn ball used a sugary adhesive to hold popped kernels together.

Although popcorn balls were highly popular around the turn of the century, their popularity subsequently declined.

Popcorn balls, made by binding popped kernels with a sugary glue, became hugely popular around the turn of the 20th century.

Hybrids capable of producing 100% butterfly flakes were developed as part of the diversification of popcorn varieties.

Kernels from a single popcorn cob may produce both butterfly and mushroom flakes, two distinct popped-kernel forms.

The popcorn brand bearing Orville Redenbacher’s name was launched in 1970.

Hybrids producing 100% mushroom flakes were developed as recently as 1998, much later than the traditional mixed-flake varieties.