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Show Tin can mostly made of steel It costs so little people throw it away without even thinking about it. It's so widely wid-ely used that there's scarcely a household in America that doesn't have several around at all times. Yet it's so valuable that no one could live nearly so well without it. What's more, thousands of skilled workmen and tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment were required to make it, while its purchase price is less than a postage stamp. What is it? i If you said a tin can, you're ; absolutely right. Right, except i that it's a good bet you didn't i know tin cans are really al most 58 percent steel. Or, that a major part of the steel produced pro-duced at U. S. Steel's Geneva Works goes into the production of these small but important food preservers and containers. Americans open over 42 million mil-lion cans a year almost 259 for every man, woman and ? child in the country without realizing that tin coated steel i cans package almost half of I our nation's food supply. The average U. S. housewife, who opens at least 500 a year, j probably has little idea of the research, time, energy and skill I that have been spent in scien tifically designing the can she i so casually empties and tosses away. It all started with a contest in France, way back in 1795, when the government offered a prize of 12,000 francs to anyone who could find a way to provide sailors at sea with fresh provisions. France was then still in the toils of revolution and at war with most of its neighbors, so few citizens took the offer seriously. ser-iously. But, one 45-year-old candy-maker, named Nicolas Appert, a former cook, pickler and brewer, started on a persistent per-sistent search to win the contest. con-test. , In 1809, Napoleon's government govern-ment judged the contest and pronounced Appert the winner. The following year Appert published pub-lished a book describing his process and the world got the big news that food preserving was possible. In 1810, an Englishman, named Peter Durand, patented a process for preserving food in a similar manner by sealing seal-ing it in cans of tin-coated iron and tin canning began. The first commercial success in canned foods was achieved by British merchants who did a lively export business in preserved pre-served delicacies between 1810 and 1925. The first American canner, William Underwood, together with two astute businessmen named Kensett and Dagget, established es-tablished the first canning plants near Baltimore, and made that city a canning center cen-ter during the 1830's. Just recently, U. S. .Steel announced a new thinner tin plate called "ferrolite" which combines the qualities of proportionate pro-portionate greater strength and lighter weight with lower material ma-terial cost. About half the thickness of tin plate now used in can making, mak-ing, the new "thin tin" holds promise of writing still another chapter to the story of the tin can an unheralded symbol of our modern way of life. |
