TIN CANS AND HISTORY

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 30, 5 February 1927, Page 20

TIN CANS AND HISTORY

EARLY EFFORTS AT PRESERVING FOOD

It was Napoleon Bonaparte who, wanting fresh moats and vegetables for his soldiers, first, offered a prize equal to about £500 for a written description of how to preserve food in a way to taste fresh. The prize offered set the chef and confectioner, Francois Appert, to work, and in 1804, after nine years of experimenting, he succeeded, and his description uf his process won the prize. He used wide-mouthed bottles, corked and sealed, and it was not until several years later that Peter Durand, an Englishman, first used a tin can, or "canister," as he called it. The first preserving done in America was done by two Englishmen who had learned the process in England (says the "Christian Science Monitor"). They wore William Underwood and Charles Mitchell, and they used glass containers for their vegetable and fish canning. It was in 1825 that Thomas Konsett took out tho first patent for a tin can, but it was little like what we have to-day. The old cans wore cut by Land from a sheet of metal and a rapid workman could make CO a day. To-day, with modern machinery, a man can. turn out 1500 cans'and these far better than the old hand-cut ones. In the old sailingvessel days the ships carried cows to supply milk for any babies on board. Often the cows would go dry because they were no£,used to the food they got. Gail Borden had little money, but he persuaded the Shakers, a religious group at Now Lebanon in New York, to help him, and he experimented in boiling the water out of milk until he had it condensed,' so that a quantity could go into'a small can. For many years Borden worked to perfect his idea, bearing ridicule and poverty, but in the end he succeeded aud won fame and iortune. Then, came the Civil War, and the United States Government became a customer for canned foods to feed its armies marching through parts of .tho country where all foods were gone. Thousands of men who had nevor before eaten canned food went home to spread the news of this new way of keeping foods, and the growth of the canning industry in America really dated from the Civil War. There have been romances in the canning industry, too. In a small Pennsylvanian town a young man, looking for a way to earn money, began putting up horseradish that he found growiiig behind a doserted house. Then he added' beans and other vegetables to his list until the name of Heinz is known throughout the country. And in France to-day, the descendants of Francois Appert are still in the canning business and putting up delicacies, such iaa breast of capon and truffles, that are fit for a Royal feast. We take our canned food as a matter of course,. yet eacli year Alaska packs twice as much salmon as would pay the £1,500,000 which the United States gave Russia for that territory in 1868.