CANNING

lived, Dad always planted a fig tree first thing, and fig preserves soon followed. As a child, helping mother make fig preserves was always part of my summer fun. Little did I realize that years later, I would be carrying on her tradition by making my own fig preserves from my figs.

How did canning begin? Before canning, food was preserved by drying, smoking, salting or fermenting. That changed in 1795 when Napoleon Bonaparte offered a reward of around $2 million in today’s money to anyone who could develop a safe method of preserving food to be carried by his traveling army. Frenchman Nicholas Appert accepted Bonaparte’s challenge, and after 15 years of experimentation, perfected the first method of canning.

In 1810, Appert showed off his new preservation method by placing cooked vegetables in glass jars and sealing the jars with corks. He placed the jars in boiling water and heated them thoroughly. The jars were removed, melted wax was placed around each cork to further seal the jars, and a wire was fastened over the cork to ensure it remained in place. Appert won the $2 million prize and published a booklet describing his preservation method. He began a canning company in France with his prize money.

Even though Appert’s canning method worked, no one knew why. It would take another 50 years for Louis Pasteur to discover that bacteria caused food spoilage and that the high heat of canning killed the bacteria.

Canning methods continued to evolve when Englishman Peter Durand developed another method of canning food using tin cans. In 1858, New Yorker John L. Mason, only 26 years old at the time, invented a one-piece zinc lid and a glass jar that fit the lid to hold canned produce. However, his patent expired before any jars were mass produced, and he never earned any money from his invention.

In 1880, five brothers whose last name was Ball founded a manufacturing company in Buffalo, N.Y. They began their company with a $200 loan and high hopes for success. Their first product was a tin-jacketed glass jug for storing kerosene or coal oil used in oil lamps.

After manufacturing the glass jugs, there was extra glass left over. Being true entrepreneurs, the brothers looked for a product to make with the extra glass. They came up with the idea of producing glass canning jars and chose the Mason jar for their design.

Their first jars had the pressed logo: BBGMCo (Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company) imprinted on the side. They were nicknamed “Buffalo jars” and were made for three years in amber and aqua colors. These jars used glass lids sealed with wax. Interestingly, it is said only three amber jars from this first production exist today. Some of the jars also had “Mason” pressed into the side of the jar to pay homage to the original Mason jar design.

In 1885, Ball Company began manufacturing wire bail, glass lid jars. These jars had a glass lid secured to the jar by a wire fastener that could be pulled up and over the lid. The “Ball” name was imprinted near the top of the jar and the words “IDEAL” or “SURE SEAL” were at the bottom of the jar.

The brothers moved their manufacturing plant to Muncie, Ind., and began producing oil jugs, chimneys for oil lamps and canning jars. By 1897, Ball Company was producing more than 65 percent of all canning jars in the U.S. Their jars sold for five cents each. In time, they would become the largest supplier of canning jars world-wide.

Where it once took five workmen one day to produce 10 jars, by 1898, a machine had been perfected that could produce 50 jars in a day. This was one of the earliest examples of technology’s ability to rule the manufacturing industry. As new technologies were invented to make production of canning jars faster and cheaper, Ball Company continued to maintain its dominance. They were proud to play an important role in pioneering the food preservation industry in America.

A change from the traditional narrow-mouthed canning jar produced by Ball Company came when Alexander Kerr invented the wide-mouth canning jar in 1912. He also invented a lid with two pieces – an inner, circular lid with a rubber ring attached to its underside that created a vacuum seal when heated and an outer ring with screw threads that allowed the lid to be screwed in place on the jar. By purchasing new inner lids, the original jars and outer rings were reusable, making the canning process more cost effective. Ball Company quickly copied this idea and produced its own wide-mouth jars with two-piece lids.

One of the Ball brothers, George Ball, and his wife, Frances, began experimenting with canning recipes and compiled a cookbook to help gardeners enjoy a successful experience canning their garden’s produce.

Their cookbook, “The Correct Method for Preserving Fruits,” was published in 1909. That first book was so popular that a new edition was printed yearly. They were affectionately called “Blue Books” and were prized wedding gifts. At the time, they were one of the most widely printed books in English in the world.

Throughout the decades, Ball Company acquired numerous smaller glassmaking companies and continued to be the dominant manufacturer of canning jars, selling billions of jars world-wide.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, families were unable to purchase food and relied upon their canned produce to survive. As part of the war effort during World War II, Ball Company chose to manufacture only their line of round canning jars with screw-top lids in order to save on materials needed for the war effort.

After World War II, frozen foods were introduced to the public and directly competed with Ball Company for customers. Ball was up to the challenge and created a wide-mouth jar with a flat lid that could stack neatly in the freezer. Of course, the name for the new line was “Ball Freezer Jars.” Metric gradations were marked on the side of each jar and became the standard for Ball jars up until 1975.

Over the years, Ball jars have been produced in clear glass, aqua, green, apple green, Ball blue and flint (hues of smoky gray, brown, pink, amber and lavender). Their line of distinctive “Ball blue” jars was due in part to the type of sand from Lake Michigan’s shores used in their production. For America’s bicentennial year in 1976, a special jar was produced that had an oval bicentennial logo on its side and a wire bail lid.

Today, all standard canning jars sold in the United States are made by a company called Jarden Home Brands, which owns Ball, Kerr and Bernardin (a Canadian company). Jarden has kept the Ball and Kerr brand names and continues to imprint these historic names on their jars.

When Ball Company stopped producing glass jars in 1996, it continued manufacturing metal beverage cans, metal food and aerosol cans and metal packaging containers. Although Ball Company is no longer the world’s largest manufacturer of glass canning jars, it is now the world’s largest supplier of aluminum slugs used to make aerosol cans, beverage bottles, collapsible tubes, and technical impact extrusions.

Like the Energizer Bunny that never stops, Ball Company is one of those rare companies that has changed with the times and has kept on manufacturing.

Our modern-day mantra of reduce, reuse and recycle actually began back in 1858 when John L. Mason invented the first Mason jar and continued with Ball and Kerr jars. Today, gardening and canning are once again gaining in popularity, and it seems the demand for canning jars is here to stay.

Happy gardening!