Who's the Inventor Behind Tang, Pop Rocks, and Cool Whip?

fascination with convenience foods. One Marv Rudolph worked with Mitchell for six years at the company. In an interview with Great Big Story, he said Bill was the inventor at General Foods. He knew what amplified flavors, what colors to use to make something more attractive. If you had a problem, he was the guy to go to. Management tried to promote Bill many times, but he said, no, just keep me in my lab. It's what I want to do.

Mitchell was awarded more than seventy patents for foods he invented while working there, but his success was not a given. He was almost killed in an explosion before he ever had a chance to concoct some of the world's favorite junk foods. Born to a Minnesota farm family in nineteen eleven, A. Mitchell was no stranger to hard work. His father died while he was still an elementary school, so Mitchell harvested peas and beans for area farmers to help supplement the

family income. By the time he was a teenager, Mitchell's family had relocated to Colorado, where he earned money by trapping muskrats and harvesting melons. During high school, he worked an overnight shift operating the sugar crystallization tanks at the American Beach Sugar Company, and after a shift frequently caught a scant two hours of sleep. Before classes began, A Mitchell worked as a carpenter to pay his way through

undergrad in Nebraska. Went on to earn a master's degree in chemistry from the University of Nebraska, then stepped into a research chemist role at the Agricultural Experiment Station in Lincoln. Not long after he started working there, a laboratory explosion from heating a cracked beaker of alcohol left him with second and third degree burns over eighty percent of his body.

After months of recovery, he returned to the lab, this time as a research chemist at General Foods Corporation in White Plains, New York, where he would spend the next thirty five years inventing one unique convenience food after another. One of Mitchell's first food stuff inventions was a replacement for tapioca, a staple that helped quell the hunger of

American forces fighting in World War Two. To combat a shortage of naturally occurring tapioca, which is a starch extracted from the cassava plant, Mitchell developed a tapioca adjacent product derived from the starches of more readily available grains and gelatine, which soldiers nicknamed Mitchell's mud. In nineteen fifty seven, he went on to create a powdered drink that would eventually

wind up in space tang. A tang was composed primarily of sugar with a bit of vitamin C and some additives thrown in a When mixed with water, it turns into a bright tangerine colored drink that tastes strongly of oranges. Although sales of the drink powder were initially lackluster, it captured the imagination and taste buds of many Americans when it went into orbit. A tang was used in nineteen sixty two to make the water more palatable for astronaut

John Glenn's Mercury space flight. It masked the metallic flavor of the stored liquid. Tang was subsequently brought a board more space flights, and by the time the Apollo eight mission was televised in nineteen sixty eight, a tang was the major sponsor of ABC's space launch broadcast, though astronaut Buzz Aldron much later admitted and I quote tang sucks. Even as Tang was taking American shopping list by storm, Mitchell had set his sights on food inventions that would

make meal preparation faster and easier for home cooks. In nineteen sixty seven, he patented a quick set form of cello that could be made with cold water rather than hot, saving a step and a bunch of setting time, and just a few months after that, Mitchell came up with Coolwhip,

the first freezer safe non dairy whipped cream. Unlike dairy cream whipped into a foam which would collapse or even separate if it freezes, a cool whip is stabilized so it can be stored frozen, making it easier to ship and saving consumers from the labor involved in making fresh whipped cream. Cool Whip also starred in many recipes of

the mid twentieth century, like flag cake and Mississippi Mudpie. Nowadays, coolwhip does include some milk and cream, as American consumers tastes have swung away from artificiality, though of course we still like to save time. Perhaps mitchell most endearing invention was pop rocks from nineteen fifty six. It came about when he was experimenting with ways to add carbonation to powdered kool aid. The carbonated drink mix didn't quite work

as hoped, so Mitchell gave up on it. But twenty years later another scientist tweaked the formula and the result was the explosive candy called pop rocks that crackles and fizzles inside your mouth. By the way, contrary to the popular myth, consuming pop rocks along with soda won't make your stomach explode. General Foods had to take out full page ads in newspapers in the nineteen seventies to refute

that claim. But it was this commitment to the science of discovery and his willingness to fail that made Mitchell's career accomplishments so enduring. Take for example, his efforts to create dry alcohol by mixing wet alcohol with an intensely processed absorbent starch called multodextron. It didn't work out, but each discovery was a learning experience that informed his future efforts. For the article, this episode is based on how Stuff Works.

Spoke with Claire Conagan, who's the associate director of content at Data Essential of food and beverage market research and intelligence platform. She said pop Rocks was an attempt at instant soda that found a different purpose. Tang was made to simulate fresh orange juice via flavor crystals, making it easier to transport and longer to store. A cool whip was made to ease the handwhipping cream process for people

and to allow it to be stored frozen. They all remain nostalgic today and are often reintroduced to new generations by their parents or grandparents who are nostalgic or appreciate the convenience. Mitchell retired from General Foods in nineteen seventy six, and he passed away in two thousand and four, a father of seven who was married for sixty years, and whose daughter Cheryl, became a food scientist too. He was remembered in his obituary as a devoted, stimulating, and loving parent.

Of course, he's also remembered, even if not always by name, by the millions of consumers who have startled their taste buds with pop rocks or pretended they were an astronaut while drinking tang. Today's episode is based on the article Meet the Man who invented Poolwhip, Tang and pop Rocks on Housteworks dot com, written by Laurel Dove. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com, and

is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.