Who Invented the Ice Cream Cone?

Americans have been enjoying ice cream on a cone for over a century. The ice cream cone was actually invented independently by two people and has evolved into the waffle cones, sugar cones, and wafer cones we enjoy today.

Italo Marchiony, who immigrated to New York City from Italy in the late 1800s, is credited with inventing the ice cream cone. He produced the first one in 1896 and obtained a patent for it in December 1903.

Ernest A. Hamwi, a Syrian concessionaire, introduced an ice cream cone independently at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Hamwi was selling zalabis, a crisp, waffle-like pastry, in a booth next to an ice cream vendor. The ice cream was so popular that the vendor ran out of dishes. Hamwi helped out by rolling one of his waffles into the shape of a cone, which he called a cornucopia, and giving it to the ice cream vendor. The cone cooled quickly, and the vendor filled it with ice cream. The customers enjoyed it, and the idea caught on.

People in St. Louis soon began inventing special equipment to bake cornucopia cones. One of the first independent producers of ice cream cones was Stephen Sullivan of Sullivan, Missouri, who served ice cream cones at the Modern Woodmen of America Frisco Log Rolling in Sullivan.

Meanwhile, Hamwi founded the Cornucopia Waffle Company. He created the Missouri Cone Company in 1910. It later became known as the Western Cone Company.

Two distinct types of ice cream cones developed. The rolled cone was made from a waffle that was baked in a round shape and rolled as soon as it came off the griddle. It quickly hardened into a crisp cone. The other type of ice cream cone was molded by pouring batter into a shell, inserting a core for baking, and then removing the core, or by pouring the batter into a mold, baking it, and then splitting the mold to remove the cone.

The ice cream cone business expanded in the 1920s. A record 245 million cones were produced in 1924. Changes in automatic machinery now allow machines to produce around 150,000 cones per day.