Random facts: the history of charcoal briquettes

I know I've been doing random posts lately, but this is a REALLY random post! 

Since we're coming up on the 4th of July in the US, and it's officially summer grilling season, I thought I'd share the origin story of the charcoal briquette and the Kingsford charcoal company.

We were watching The Food That Built America on The History Channel  and they had an episode about BBQ, titled, Where There's Smoke and I thought it had an interesting bit of trivia that I didn't know. 

Henry Ford, of the Ford Motor Company, was making and selling over a million cars in the 1920's. Back then, cars were made of wood and used 100 feet of wood per car. 

Wanting more control of the process and to save money, he sought the help of Michigan real estate agent, and family friend, Edward G. Kingsford to find suitable land. 

Once up & running though, the mill generated a lot of waste. This bugged Ford so he decided to venture into making a new fangled thing, invented by a chemist named Orin Stafford, called charcoal briquettes (made from sawdust and mill waste and held together with cornstarch), with an eye towards marketing to families who were doing more things outdoors - thanks to being more mobile because of his cars. 

Ford, not knowing the first thing about how to build a factory to make charcoal briquettes, enlisted his good friend Thomas Edison, who helped design the factory to be built next to the sawmill, which was a model of efficiency, and let Kingsford run it. 

The company was named Ford Charcoal and only renamed it Kingsford Chemical Company in 1951, after Ford's death in 1947.

Ford sold what he called "picnic kits" containing the charcoal briquettes and a small portable grill for $1, exclusively at his dealerships and larger quantities to meat smoking plants. The home backyard grill wasn't invented yet, and grilling as we know it, didn't take off until after WWII.

I had no idea it was Henry Ford who brought charcoal to the mainstream or that Ford Charcoal was the original name for Kingsford. Nor did I realize Thomas Edison's involvement. Did you?

Do you all have any plans for the holiday? We have a new event in town. All day music and food by the waterfront. It's only 5 minutes away, so I think we're going to do that for the 4th. Otherwise it's just a chill weekend (or not - since it will be in the 90's) with the dogs at home.

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Don't shoot your eye out with fireworks and keep your pets inside! More pets go missing on the holiday than any other time of they year - they can get scared and disoriented from the firewrks.