Houten married Hermina van Houten (unrelated) from Groningen. In 1850, he moved his production from a windmill in Leiden to a steam factory in Weesp. By that time he was exporting chocolate to England, France, and Germany. In 1866, John Cadbury traveled to Weesp to buy a Van Houten press, but did not use it in his manufacturing until 1875. Coenraad's son Casparus Johannes (1844–1901), employed since 1865, had a gift for marketing and contributed greatly to the growth of the company. Advertisements for Van Houten could be found on trams throughout Europe and the United States. As early as 1899, Van Houten produced a commercial film that depicted a sleepy clerk who recovers miraculously after eating some chocolate. The factory was a boost for the town of Weesp, whose population doubled in the second half of the 19th century. Casparus Jr. had himself built a 99-room Jugendstil villa in Weesp, by the renowned architect Abraham Salm (1857–1915). Work was started in 1897 but not completed until 1901, the year he died. The Van Houten company was sold in 1962 to W.R. Grace, and the factories in Weesp closed in 1971. The Van Houten brand name, still in use, has been transferred several times since, in 1990 from the German chocolate manufacturer Jacobs Suchard to Philip Morris. It subsequently was owned by the Stollwerck chocolate manufacturing company and since 2002 by Barry Callebaut. The legacy of Dutch process cocoa Dutch process cocoa is generally acknowledged as superior to cocoa not processed in this way. The combination of the inventions by father and son van Houten led to the nineteenth-century mass production and consumption of chocolate, or, as some call it, the "democratization" of chocolate. Popular culture "Drink Van Houten's Cocoa!" wrote Vladimir Mayakovsky in his poem, A Cloud in Trousers, referencing an urban legend about a publicity trick by Van Houten company: paying a condemned man to shout their slogan directly before being hanged. This infamous citation is the title of Ornela Vorpsi's book from 2010. A Van Houten's Cocoa shop can be seen during the opening battle sequence of Neil Jordan's 1996 film Michael Collins. References External links Van Houten Drinks Van Houten's Cocoa 1801 births 1887 deaths 19th-century Dutch businesspeople Businesspeople from Amsterdam Businesspeople in confectionery Chocolatiers 19th-century Dutch chemists 19th-century Dutch inventors People from Weesp