ICE CREAM SCOOPS

Found in cities across the United States

Ice Cream. Nostalgic. A universally loved dessert. A comfort food, a celebratory treat, a seasonal delight. Ice Cream brings people together.

Alfred Cralle, black inventor and businessman, patented the first ice cream scoop in 1897. While working as a porter at the Markell Brothers drugstore in Pittsburg, Alfred noticed his fellow employees struggling to scoop ice cream cones for customers. He decided to design a contraption to scoop ice cream easily with one hand. His cone-shaped invention was called “ice-cream mold and disher.”

Many of the wooden handle ice cream scoops in this collection were made by The Gilchrist Company in Newark, New Jersey. Makers of “Better Than Need Be” goods.  Raymond B. Gilchrist was one of the early 1900’s most prolific ice cream scoop inventors.  Gilchrist operated a hardware manufacturing company and often added specialty items to his regular lines.  In 1908, he began to manufacture a nickel-plated brass round scoop with a wooden handle. It became commercially known as “Gilchrist’s Automatic Ice Cream Disher No. 31.” (The marking is located on the thumb key) His scoops became the most common brand used in soda fountain shops of the day.