Chocolate

Chocolate, the main ingredient of most candy bars, has been around since the ancient civilizations but it was only in the 1800s that chocolate was eaten. Drinking chocolate was the favorite of the Aztec emperor, Montezuma. In 1529, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez brought it to Spain which in turn became a favorite of the Spanish royalty for many years. When it reached the rest of Europe, it was consumed widely. Three hundred years later in England, chocolate was first consumed in its non-liquid confection form.

The first forms of solid chocolate were in bars and were made of bittersweet chocolate. The present favorite of eighty percent of the world’s population is what is known as Milk Chocolate and this was only introduced in 1875. It was in this time Henry Nestle, the creator of evaporated milk, got together with Daniel Peter, who was a chocolate maker, and came up with milk chocolate.

A few years later, at the 1893 Columbian Exposition which was a World’s Fair in Chicago, Milton S. Hershey purchased a chocolate-making machine from Dresden, Germany. Hershey was known at that time for his caramel creations and saw that chocolate had a lot of potential. The German machine was placed in his Lancaster factory and he began producing his first chocolate bars known as Hershey bars a year later.

Following the footsteps of Milton Hershey, other Americans started to throw in other ingredients into the chocolate such as almonds, caramel, and peanuts. These became new candy bars and sold like crazy throughout the end of 1890 to the early 1900s. But it was not until World War I that the candy bar would reach incredible heights.

In World War I, the United States Army Quartermaster Corps gave orders to several American chocolate and candy bar manufacturers. The orders were to provide the Quartermaster bases with twenty to forty pound blocks of chocolate which were shipped regularly. These blocks were then chopped up into smaller pieces and were given to the doughboys in Europe. The doughboys loved the chocolate. Eventually, the chopping up of the blocks became impractical and the American chocolate manufacturers were ordered to produce them in smaller pieces before shipping them. When the war ended and the doughboys returned to their homes in the provinces, they introduced the candy bars to the civilians who also wanted more. This level of demand promised the candy bar manufacturers an international and growing consumer base and assured business and profit for a very long time. As a result, more candy bar factories were built throughout the United States and as many as 40,000 different kinds of candy bars were invented since then and through the 1920s.

Early in Candy bar history, the pioneering batches of candy bar industries were situated on the Eastern coast of the United States. They were located in cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Since these industries had to ship the raw materials such as milk, corn syrup, and sugar from the Midwest, new factories were built there. This resulted in more production at less cost since the materials were readily available. Chicago became the base of the candy bar industry then until today.