Ice cream cones became popular in America in the first decade of the 20th
century. On December 13, 1903, Italo Marchiony of New York received a U.S.
patent for a mold for making pastry cups to hold ice cream; he claimed that
he had been selling ice cream in edible pastry holders since 1896. However,
his patent was not for a cone and he lost the lawsuits that he later filed
against cone manufacturers for patent infringement.

In St. Louis, Missouri during the 1904 St. Louis Worlds Fair, the owner of
Banner Creamery, George Bang, was selling ice cream when he allegedly  
ran out of bowls and was given rolled-up waffles to serve it in instead.

According to some historians,the earliest cones were rolled by hand, from hot
thin wafers, but in 1912, Frederick Bruckman, an inventor from Portland,
Oregon, patented a machine for rolling ice cream cones. He sold his company
to Nabisco in 1928, which is still producing ice cream cones to this day. The 
Independent ice-cream company’s such as Ben & Jerry’s make their own
cones.