It's been almost 100 years that most Americans have been buying ready-made clothes and pre-measured, pre-packaged products on a regular basis. Brand names and trademarks are now a way of life in America but prior to 1900, you pretty much made your own clothes and went to your local store to get food out of bins.

Sometime in the 1890's, the great American tradition was first established, of having cereal in the morning for breakfast. And it all started because of a health food craze in Battle Creek, Michigan. Before it was known as the cereal capital of the world, Battle Creek was best known as the home of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which had a strict code of vegetarianism.

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was one of the church's members, and a big supporter of healthy eating. The patients at his Battle Creek sanitarium lived on a diet of nuts and grains, often prepared in Kellogg's experimental kitchens.

Dr. Kellogg's early innovations in diet and food preparation gave us meat and butter substitutes such as Protose, Nuttose and Nuttolene. There were some products that did stand the test of time, such as granola, which was first made at the facility in 1877.

Patients were not allowed to drink coffee or tea--instead they received a home-brewed Carmel coffee made from bran, molasses and burnt bread crusts.

One of Kellogg's patients at the sanitarium in 1891 recovering from some bad business dealings was a man named C.W. Post, who enjoyed this new blend of coffee so much that he went on to develop his own coffee substitute.

Post stayed on in Battle Creek to create Postum Cereal Food Drink, and two years later with one of the first widely promoted cold cereals, to be called Grape-Nuts. By 1901 both products brought in an income of close to a million dollars a year.

Dozens of other companies would start sprouting up in Battle Creek, trying to cash in on this cereal health food craze.

Dr Kellogg was content with others making money on cereal, while he ran his sanitarium, but his brother, W.K. Kellogg, wasn't--he started looking for ways to promote some of Dr. Kellogg's food products, and he had especially high hopes for a flaked cereal that his brother had invented in 1894.

At first the cereal was made from wheat, but four years later they started making it from corn as well. They first sold it by mail to their patients, under the name Sanitas corn flakes, for those wanting to continue Kellogg's diets when they went home.

By 1903, W.K. Kellogg had had enough with his brother's strict requirments for the product and he set out to promote it himself. He improved the flavor by adding all the things his brother hated, including malt, sugar and salt.

W.K. changed the name to Kellogg's Toasted Corn Flakes. Through an extensive adversting campaign, which included giving the cereal away door to door, soon Toasted Corn Flakes was established as an important staple in the breakfast cereal world.

In 1941, Kellogg's Rice Krispies would begin using the three elf- like characters Snap, Crackle, and Pop, representing the sounds the cereal made when milk was added, to promote the cereal.

It made this cereal stand out among all of its competitors because it made noise and gave a new image to puffed rice. Another cartoon spokesperson, Tony the Tiger, was added for Kelloggs Sugar Frosted Flakes in 1953.

The Quaker Oats man first appeared on the scene in 1877 as the trademark for a small oatmeal milling factory in Ravenna, Ohio. The ownership over the years changed hands many times, until the American Cereal company bought it in 1890.

The company created a major campaign to promote their new principal oatmeal brand with the Quaker Oats man on it. The following year, they filled trains with cardboard containers loaded with Quaker Aats and crossed the country giving the cereal away at every settlement, asking people to try it.

Before long the company had giant billboards and wall signs of the Quaker appearing in cities and towns all over the world.