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Show Canning Now a Science wfHO invented the modern can-4i. can-4i. ning process? About 8,000,- 000,000 cans of processed foods are now put up in the United States every year, and most of them are consumed by the American people. Since the canning industry has grown to such gigantic proportions propor-tions scientists have been working on every aspect of it, and commercial commer-cial canning has become a science. Scientists have not only done this, but they have delved .into the interesting in-teresting past history of canning. Dr. A. W. Bitting, formerly associated asso-ciated with the National Canners' Association laboratories at Washington, Wash-ington, D. C, has collected all the data on the subject available about 1200 volumes from the year 1500 to date, some of which were prepared from manuscripts n"or to the Christian era. In a communication quoted by "Wrangler" in the "Canning Trade" Dr. Bitting says in part: "I am convinced that Nicholas Appert was the man who discovered the art of preservfng food by treating treat-ing the same with heat and holding it in a hermetically sealed container. I believe his title is as clear in this respect as that of Morse for the telegraph. tele-graph. Bell for the telephone, or Edison for his numerous inventions. It is true that Appert was not the first to preserve foods by what we term canning. He never made such a claim. That was done after a fashion for two hundred years before be-fore his time. But no one knew why it kept sometimes and spoiled at others. The closest approach to the work of Appert is that of Denys Papin about a hundred and twenty-five twenty-five years before." |