Powdered tea began in China during the Tang dynasty, when tea leaves were pounded into powder and whisked into hot water, sometimes flavoured with salt, onion or ginger. The scholar Lu Yu described steeping powdered tea in his Classic of Tea around 760 CE. During the Song dynasty, whisks and bowls spread and the drink was whisked to a froth, with the ideal tea taste shifting toward smoothness and aroma. Lump tea became expensive and complicated, and in 1391 the Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang banned compressed tea, so loose-leaf brewing took over in China. Japanese monks had brought powdered tea home earlier; the monk Eisai wrote the Book of Drinking Tea for Health in 1214, and Japan developed shade-grown, stone-milled matcha into its own tradition.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.