The development of the flaked cereal in 1894 has been variously described by John Kellogg, his wife
Ella Eaton Kellogg, his younger brother Will, and other family members. There is considerable disagreement over who was involved in the discovery, and the role that they played. According to some accounts, Ella suggested rolling out the dough into thin sheets, and John developed a set of rollers for the purpose. According to others, John
had the idea in a dream, and used equipment in his wife's kitchen to do the rolling. It is generally agreed that upon being called out one night, John Kellogg left a batch of wheat-berry dough behind. Rather than throwing it out the next morning, he sent it through the rollers and was surprised to obtain delicate flakes, which could then be baked. Will Kellogg was tasked with figuring out what had happened and recreating the process reliably. Ella and Will were often at odds, and their versions of the story tend to minimize or deny each other's involvement, while emphasizing their own.
Tempering, the process the Kelloggs had discovered, was to become a fundamental technique of the flaked cereal industry. A patent for "Flaked Cereals and Process of Preparing Same" was filed on May 31, 1895, and issued on April 14, 1896, to John Harvey Kellogg as Patent No. 558,393. Significantly, the patent applied to a variety of types of grains, not just to wheat. John Harvey Kellogg was the only person named on the patent. Will later insisted that he, not Ella, had worked with John, and repeatedly asserted that he should have received more credit than he was given for the discovery of the flaked cereal. The flakes of grain, which the Kellogg brothers called
Granose, were a very popular food among the patients. The brothers then experimented with other flakes from other grains. In 1906, Will Keith Kellogg, who served as the business manager of the sanitarium, decided to try to mass-market the new food. At his new company,
Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, he added sugar to the flakes to make them more palatable to a mass audience, but this caused a rift between his brother and him. In 1907, his company ran an ad campaign which offered a free box of cereal to any woman who winked at her grocer. To increase sales, in 1909 he added a special offer, the
Funny Jungleland Moving Pictures Booklet, which was made available to anyone who bought two boxes of the cereal. This same premium was offered for 22 years. At the same time, Kellogg also began experimenting with new grain cereals to expand its product line.
Rice Krispies, his next great hit, first went on sale in 1928. The first mascot of Kellogg's Corn Flakes was a female figure,
The Sweetheart of the Corn, who appeared on the first boxes. In 1957
Cornelius The Rooster or
Corny, created by Leo Burnett advertising agency, made his debut first on boxes of Corn Flakes and later in television commercials. In early commercials, he would speak the catchphrase "Wake up, up, up to Kellogg's Cornflakes!"
Dallas McKennon and
Andy Devine voiced him. Later, he stopped talking and simply crowed. The concept of using a stylized
rooster originated from a suggestion by family friend
Nansi Richards, a harpist from Wales, based on the similarity between
ceiliog, the Welsh word for "rooster", and Kellogg's (unrelated) surname. There is a disputed claim that corn flakes were intended to suppress
sexual desire. Kellogg did promote a "simple, pure and unstimulating diet" for that reason, but the marketing and patent on corn flakes made no mention of it. ==In cooking==