The cereal giant that once built spy balloons and a deep-sea submersible
General Mills is known for Cheerios and Betty Crocker, but for a time it also made high-altitude balloons for the US Navy and designed Alvin, the submersible later used to explore the Titanic. Its history wanders from flour dust explosions to Play-Doh, Red Lobster and a Supreme Court fight over Monopoly.
The business began with flour mills on Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis. The Washburn family built their B Mill there in 1866 and a larger A Mill in 1874. In 1878 flour dust blew the A Mill apart, killing 18 workers, but the rebuilt mill used automatic steel rollers instead of grinding stones, the first ever, and made better flour. After Washburn-Crosby brands swept the medals at a Cincinnati millers' exhibition in 1880, the firm launched Gold Medal flour. General Mills itself formed on 20 June 1928, when Washburn-Crosby's president, James Ford Bell, combined it with three rival mills, and it has paid a dividend every year since.
Engineering shaped the pantry. Thomas R. James invented a puffing gun that inflated cereal pieces, used for Kix in 1937 and for Cheerioats, now Cheerios, in 1941. Other staff devised a glue sealer for flour bags and, in 1956, the tear strip for opening packages.
The oddest chapter began in 1946 with an aeronautical research division that built high-altitude balloons with the Office of Naval Research. In 1956 the US government launched hundreds of its balloons over Eastern Bloc countries under Project Genetrix to gather intelligence. The electronics division developed the Alvin submersible.
Diversification then ran wild. General Mills bought Play-Doh's maker in 1965, then Kenner and Parker Brothers, and lost a case at the Supreme Court trying to stop an economist's Anti-Monopoly game using the word. It grew Red Lobster from five restaurants and founded Olive Garden in 1982, before spinning the restaurants off in 1995. Since 2018 it has also sold pet food after buying Blue Buffalo for $8 billion.
Source: General Mills
