History of Chocolate...
Christopher Columbus is believed to be the first European to discover chocolate. When Columbus returned to Spain in 1502 from his fourth voyage to the New World, he introduced many treasures to the court of King Ferdinand. Among them were cocoa beans, almond-shaped seeds from the cacao tree that are the source of all the chocolate and cocoa products we enjoy today.
Mass production of chocolate began when the steam engine, invented by James Watt in 1770, mechanized the cocoa bean grinding process, thereby replacing the timeconsuming hand method of manufacture. In the middle of the 19th century, two significant developments revolutionized the chocolate industry. In 1847, an English company introduced solid " eating " chocolate. Now the public could enjoy chocolate eaten out of the hand as well as in the form of a drink. Three decades later, at Switzerland, Daniel Peter found that milk could be added to chocolate to make a new product, appropriately named milk chocolate.
Since that time, chocolate has been manufactured in solid bar..
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