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From Wondry, I'm Stephen Johnson, and this is American Innovations.

Today, we conclude our series on Cornflakes.

John Harvey Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg fought bitterly with each other throughout most of their lives.

And even though the men never saw eye to eye on anything, one fact is clear.

Their innovations forever changed the American breakfast experience.

But the fact that they were in the same place as the American Breakfast Experience.

But the Kellogg success doesn't just belong to them.

It was as much a product of their hard work as it was the times in which they lived.

America was changing all around.

Will Kellogg embraced the industrial revolution's newest innovations, electricity, telephones, refrigeration, rail transport.

Without these, his serial empire wouldn't have been possible.

John Harvey Kellogg envisioned serial as a new product.

The serial empire wouldn't have been possible.

John Harvey Kellogg envisioned serial as a means to a healthier lifestyle at a time when indigestion was a huge problem across the country.

The nation collectively had a stomach ache.

And John Harvey Kellogg and early pioneer of wellness wanted to provide a cure through better food, religion, and clean living.

And even though the Cornflakes of the late 1800s were nothing like the serials we know in love today,

and no denying that without the Kellogg brothers inventions, vision, and savvy, breakfast as we know it could have been wildly different.

Our guest on today's episode is Howard Marquell.

He's a medical historian and professor at the University of Michigan.

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