Chocolate Milk in America: An 1896 Handwritten Patent for Processing Cocoa by Carl Rach of Chicago.

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This 1896 patent for powdered chocolate milk beverages is handwritten in German and English. The patent, 17153, was issued to Carl Rach by the Imperial Patent Office in Berlin, Germany. We know little of Rach. We find him in Chicago in 1891 and he later formed the Rach Cocoa Company in Waverly, New York.

The patent is likely connected to the American patent Rach was granted in 1895. In that patent, US549531A, Rach is identified as a citizen of Prussia living in Chicago. The patent was granted for “Cocoa products, e.g. chocolate; Substitutes therefor making liquid products, e.g. for making chocolate milk drinks and the products for their preparation, pastes for spreading, milk crumb.”

Rach’s invention, in essence, was to create a powder form made of milk and cocoa that could be then used by the consumer to make hot or chocolate milk. An unusual subject matter to find in manuscript format and dating to the nineteenth-century.

Price: $75.00