CANNED GOODS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5088, 14 February 1927, Page 3

CANNED GOODS.

THEIR ORIGIN AND HISTORY. It was Napoleon Bonaparte who, wanting fresh meats and vegetables ifor his soldiers, first offered a prize equal to about £5OO for a written description of how to preserve, food in a way to taste fresh. The prize 'Offered set the che’f and confectioner, Francoise Appert, to work, and in 1804, after nine years of Experimenting, he succeeded, and his description of his process won the prize. He used widemouthed bottles croked 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 twa Englishmen who had learned the process in England (says the Christian Science Monitor). They were William Underwood and Charles Mitchell, and they used glass containers for their vegetable and fish vanning . It was in 1825 that Thomas Kensett took oui the first patent for a tin can, but it was little like what we have to-day. The old cans were cut by hand from a sheet of metal, and a rapid workman could make 60 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 sailing vessel days the ships carried cows to supply milk 'for any babies on board. Often the cows woulft go dry because they were not used to the food .they got. Gail Bordep had little money, but he persuaded the Shakers, a religious group at New 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. Far many years Borden worked to perfect his idea, bearing ridicule and poverty, but in the end he succeeded and won fame and fortune. Then came the Civil War, and the United States Government became a customer for canned foods to feed its armies marching through parts of the country where all foods were gone. Thousands of men who had never before eaten ’canned food went home to 1 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. Therq 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 horse-radish tha; he found growing behind a. deserted house. Then he added bgans and 'ther vegetables to his list, until the name of Heinz is known throughout the country. In France fa-day the descendants of Francois Appert arQ still in the canning business, and put up delicacies such as breast ojf capon and truffles thaty are fit for a royal feast. We take our canned food as a matter of course, ye each year Alaska packs twice as, much salmon as w'ould pay the £1,500,600 which '-’he United States gave Russia for that territory in 1868.