HOW SWEET IT WAS, 1894
Machine-made candy was invented by the Germans. But it was Milton S. Hershey, a Pennsylvania candyman with a flair for packaging, who gave the world a craving for what he called simply the Hershey Milk Chocolate Bar.
Hershey, who had started in the candy business in 1876 making caramels by hand, purchased his first chocolate-making machine, a German model, in 1893. By the following year, his plant in Lancaster, PA, was turning out America's first mass-produced milk-chocolate bar and its cousin, the Hershey Almond Bar. Weighing 9/16th of an ounce each and divided into small squares easily broken off and eaten, the Hershey milk-chocolate bars were a novelty: Most candy then was sold in large, unwieldy chunks. Within a few years, Hershey introduced another innovation in candy packaging, enclosing each bar at the factory with a wrapper containing the company logo.
The whole chocolate business got a big boost when America entered World War I. The Army issued chocolate bars to the troops as quick-energy food, and when the troops came home, they came with a sweet tooth. By 1918 there were 20,000 candy companies in the U.S. Hershey rode the boom and remained a leading U.S. chocolate maker even though the company avoided advertising - Milton Hershey always believed his product would sell itself - until the 1940's.
