17th Century:

The Arawak tribe of Hispaniola cooks meat on a frame of sticks over a fire, calling it barbacòa. No surprise: Spanish conquerors take the idea.

18th Century: BBQ comes to southeastern America, where pigs are pit-roasted for hours and devoured. Different styles emerge during westward expansion, varying in sauce, cut of meat, and use of wood smoke. All taste great with beer.

1897: Ellsworth B. A. Zwoyer patents a design for charcoal briquettes. Sadly, the Kingsford Products Company—started by Henry Ford in 1921—often gets the credit for creating the briquette. (Ford was looking for a way to reuse wood scraps and sawdust from Model T assembly lines.)

Late 1940s: In the postwar boom in suburban lifestyle, open brazier grills become a backyard fixture. But the grills—and thrills—are cheap: They often burn meat without cooking it, and ash storms are common on windy days.

1952: George Stephen, a welder at Weber Brothers Metal Works, cuts a metal buoy in half to make a dome-shaped grill. He uses the top half as a lid that seals in flavor and evenly distributes heat, and adds vents to get oxygen to the fire. The iconic Weber grill is born.

1960s: In a bid to get customers to buy more natural gas, William G. Wepfer and Melton Lancaster of the Arkansas Louisiana Gas Company redesign a charcoal grill to run on bottled propane. The resulting grills are pricier but easier to use and soon become the new backyard favorite.

1980s: Infrared burner inventor Bill Best adds his ceramic burners to a BBQ. Propane heats the tile, which emits infrared radiation and cooks food directly. Restaurants love them: They grill meat evenly and lock in juices.

1991: The Fresh Prince (aka Will Smith) shows off his grill skills—and raps that "the smell from a grill can spark up nostalgia" — in the music video for "Summertime."

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1994: Your mom—and everyone else's—buys the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine. The clamshell design grills meat at the top and bottom while draining fat. Over 100 million are sold.

2000: Infrared grills aren't just for chefs anymore. Best's patent expires, leading to the production of more affordable infrared grills. At $500 to $1000, they still cost a lot of bones.

2004: The largest grill in the world is built on the Discovery Channel's Big show. It measures 15 feet 3.75 inches high, 20 feet 2.25 inches wide, and 8 feet deep.

2012: Finnish Design Shop debuts the City Boy Picnic grill, a sleek, tiny (8.7 inches tall, 7.1 wide) gas cooker that allows urbanites to pretend their fire escape is a country deck. Grill on!

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