1869: Margarine – French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès invented and patented a substance he called oleomargarine, the name of which became shortened to the trade name ‘margarine’.
1886: Coca-Cola – The prototype Coca-Cola recipe was formulated at the Eagle Drug and Chemical Company, a drugstore in Columbus, Georgia, by John Pemberton, originally as a coca wine called Pemberton's French Wine Coca. The drink we know today is basically a non-alcoholic version.
1932: Mars Bar – First manufactured in Slough, Berkshire in the United Kingdom in 1932 as a sweeter version of the US Milky Way bar which Mars, Inc. produced (not to be confused with the European version of Milky Way).
1935: Canned beer – In partnership with the American Can Company, the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company delivered 2,000 cans of Krueger's Finest Beer and Krueger's Cream Ale to faithful Krueger drinkers in Richmond, Virginia. Ninety-one percent of the drinkers approved of the canned beer, driving Krueger to give the green light to further production.
1938: Nestlé Instant Coffee – After seven years of research at the Nestlé Research Centre laboratory in Switzerland, scientist Max Mortgenthaler finally achieved the desired results by spray drying the liquid coffee into a dry soluble product. And so, on 1 April 1938, Nescafé, the project name given by the R&D team, was launched.
1953: Tetley Tea bags – Tetley was the first company that launched tea in tea bags in the United Kingdom.
1955: Commercial refrigerator and freezer units, which go by many other names, were in use for almost 40 years prior to the common home models. In this year, fridges were in 8% of households and the first advert for food appeared on television
1988: Percy Spencer invented the first microwave oven after World War II from radar technology developed during the war. Named the ‘Radarange’, it was first sold in 1947. By the late 1980s, some 40% of households had a microwave oven, often now colloquially shortened to microwave.
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