Born in Italy, Marchiony came to the U.S. and began selling flavored ices from a push cart. It was customary for these vendors to shout – in Italian – Ecco un poco, meaning “here’s a little.” This led these vendors to be called Hokey Pokey men. The English composer Al Tabor who claims he wrote the participation song and dance The Hokey Pokey says he got the song’s title from the “Hokey Pokey” nickname for ice cream vendors. But back to Marchiony. In the late 1890s, pushcart vendors of ices or ice cream served their product in small glasses, which were supposed to be returned to the pushcart. On Wall Street, where Marchiony set up, the glasses often broke or stock market traders would return to work with their glass serving cups. This cut deeply into Marchiony’s profits. So, according to his daughter Jane, Marchiony began working in his kitchen to make a new kind of container in which he could sell his ices. He found that a waffle, folded when it was hot off the iron, would hold its shape. Marchiony then crafted his own waffle iron that made 10 waffle cups at a time. This is the device that he patented.
The legend of the ice cream cone being invented by a waffle maker at a St. Louis fair has some truth to it. Again, according to Marchiony’s daughter, Marchiony was there at the St. Louis fair – with his waffle cup iron and several of these cups that he sold with his ices. He simply sold out of the waffle cups. Nearby, Syrian vendor Ernest Hamwi was selling zalabya, also called jalebi, mushabak, or other names. They’re Middle-Eastern fried dough and they can be made in lots of different shapes. Marchiony asked Hamwi to make him some zalabya. Marchiony then put some of his ices on it. That’s how an Italian immigrant and a Syrian immigrant came together in St. Louis, Missouri to create an origin story for that all-American treat, the ice cream cone. Back in New Jersey, Marchiony built an ice cream cone factory and hired pushcart vendors to sell his frozen treats in waffle cups. This is how Marchiony came to be called the “King of Ices.”
The patent for the waffle iron that made edible "cups" for ices, invented by Italo Marchiony.
A b/w photo of Italo Marchiony Image source: Italy On This Day
On this day in 1903, Italo Marchiony was awarded the U.S. patent for a specialized waffle iron that made ice cream cones. I love this story, partly because it extends in so many directions.
#Patent #History #Immigration #Immigrants #HokeyPokey #Ices/IceCream #OTD #TheLegendIsPartlyTrue
