Description:Testing Room at Bournville was one of a series of advertisements published by Cadbury between October and November 1910. Each advertisement was designed to promote a different aspect of the Bournville ethos. Testing Room was particularly focused on the application of science in the production of chocolate. In terms of Cadbury’s advertisement campaigns of the period, Testing Room offered the viewer a rare glimpse of Cadbury’s male workforce within the context of a working environment. As other contemporary images, like <a href="The" target="_blank">http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1773">The Cricket Pavilion at Bournville</a> demonstrated, men were more commonly depicted engaged in sporting activities. Testing Room was also a departure from the more typical image of the factory interior as illustrated in <a href="This" target="_blank">http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1770">This is a Bournville Workroom</a>.
The application of science within the manufacture of cocoa products was linked to the complex process of manufacturing appetising and digestible cocoa products without the inclusion of additives which, according to John Bradley’s book Cadbury’s Purple Reign, had included in extreme cases ‘brick dust and red lead’, but more commonly ‘potato flour, sago and treacle’.<small><sup>1</sup></small> Opposition to such additives had been a public and political crusade of George Cadbury’s during the late nineteenth century, the result of which was the launch of Cadbury’s Cocoa Essence in 1866,<small><sup>2</sup></small> followed by an energetic marketing campaign in 1867 and the successful lobbying of parliament with regards to ‘extractors’ used in cocoa processes which fed into the 1872 and 1875 Adulteration of Food Acts.<small><sup>3</sup></small> The success of Cocoa Essence and its supporting marketing campaign placed Cadbury for the first time at the head of cocoa manufacture in Britain.
<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup> John Bradley, Cadbury’s Purple Reign: the Story Behind Chocolate’s Best-Loved Brand (Chichester, 2008), pp.8-9
<sup>2</sup> Bradley, p.10
<sup>3</sup> Bradley, p.12</small></font>