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Speaker 1: Pushkin too quick. No, it's perfect Pushkin stuff. You got it.

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Speaker 1: Business History is not only a show about the history

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Speaker 1: of business, it is also a business. It's the way

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Speaker 1: our team makes a living. And like most media businesses,

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Speaker 1: we have basically two revenue streams. One is ads, the

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Speaker 1: get to listen to lots of other Pushkin shows ad free.

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Speaker 1: On top of that, you get to binge true crime

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Speaker 1: costs six dollars and ninety nine cents a month or

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Speaker 1: thirty nine dollars and ninety nine cents for a year.

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Speaker 1: You can sign up at Pushkin, dot fm, slash plus,

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Speaker 1: or you can do it on the Business History Show

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Speaker 1: page in Apple Podcast. And to be clear, we are

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Speaker 1: delighted to have you listen to the show in whatever

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Speaker 1: way you want to listen to it. Thank you for

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Speaker 1: your attention to this matter, Jacob.

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Speaker 2: Today's show has everything. It's got drama, it's got war,

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Speaker 2: military exploits, wild inventions, corporate intrigue. It has both monopoly

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Speaker 2: and trust busting, yes, both sides. And it has a

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Speaker 2: polar expedition trapped in ice. And it is all this

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Speaker 2: entire story packed into this little guy right here. A can,

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Speaker 2: A tin can. The tin can is so ubiquitous, so simple,

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Speaker 2: you never think about it, and yet I have thought

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Speaker 2: a lot about it. It is the complete and total

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Speaker 2: perfection of a technology. It is cheap, it is small,

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Speaker 2: you can recycle it. It does its job food. Whatever's

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Speaker 2: in this one I took the label off lasts for years.

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Speaker 1: But beyond that.

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Speaker 2: Railroads are interesting, sure, Chips and computers, yeah, somewhat transformative.

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Speaker 2: But the can is time travel, endless, summer packed in tin.

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Speaker 2: I'm Robert Smith, I'm.

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Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein, and this is Business History, a show about

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Speaker 1: the history of business today.

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Speaker 2: On the show, not one, not two, but three stories

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Speaker 2: about cans. The can spans two hundred years, and I

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Speaker 2: brought along the perfect can for each act.

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Speaker 1: Act one.

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Speaker 2: Our first can Napoleon brand baby corn. It represents the

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Speaker 2: birth of canning technology in France. Our second can Heinz

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Speaker 2: baked beans, development of the tin in the UK. And

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Speaker 2: this the humble can of beer represents American corporate takeover

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Speaker 2: of the entire industry. Oh it's fine, it's fine, my

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Speaker 2: dad drinking. Sure, let's metaphorically open can number one. Napoleon,

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Speaker 2: baby corn, and the military culinary complex. So back in

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Speaker 2: the seventeen nineties, Napoleon Bonaparte had a problem invading Russia.

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Speaker 2: Not yet, not yet, it's before that. His problem was

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Speaker 2: a way for him to build up the strength to

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Speaker 2: invade Russia. His problem was putrid, disgusting food for his troops,

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Speaker 2: rotting food. So this is after the French Revolution, royals beheaded,

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Speaker 2: no more kings. France is being run by something called

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Speaker 2: the Directory.

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Speaker 1: I would think it would be the direct Diurete, but

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Speaker 1: apparently it's not.

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Speaker 2: The Directory, the Directoire, right, And Napoleon's not yet in charge,

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Speaker 2: but you know, he's pretty close. He's running the military.

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Speaker 2: He's waging these military care campaigns for France in places

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Speaker 2: like Italy and Egypt. And you know, especially if you're

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Speaker 2: going to Egypt, right, Like, food is a huge problem.

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Speaker 2: In order to feed your troops, you have to go

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Speaker 2: to these really extreme measures. Now, people have done this

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Speaker 2: for hundreds of years, right, thousands of years. You could

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Speaker 2: dry meat, you could smoke meat, you could salt meat.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's tough, it doesn't taste very good, but

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Speaker 2: it lasts for a while. For vegetables, you could pickle

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Speaker 2: them in vinegar. This was a common thing. Again, it

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Speaker 2: doesn't taste great, right once in a while. But if

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Speaker 2: you think six months on beef, jerky and pickles, I

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Speaker 2: think it's bad.

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Speaker 1: You're not going to be a fighting shape.

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Speaker 2: Bad for the digestion. And that's what Napoleon realized was

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Speaker 2: that this wasn't just a logistical problem. This was a

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Speaker 2: morale problem. And especially if they're French, they're very demanding

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Speaker 2: about this thing.

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Speaker 1: Right. Oh, they had this thing called hard tech heart tach.

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Speaker 2: It's a cracker, thick flower and water cracker that's like

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Speaker 2: been baked four times. There is no moisture whatsoever in it.

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Speaker 2: It breaks your teeth. They call it a molar breaker.

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Speaker 2: So Napoleon says, okay, we need to have some sort

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Speaker 2: of food so I can go on these long campaigns,

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Speaker 2: you know, the Russian winter and all. And in seventeen

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Speaker 2: ninety five, the French government, urged on by Napoleon, decides

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Speaker 2: to do something. The government offers a prize twelve thousand

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Speaker 2: francs small fortune at the time for anyone who could

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Speaker 2: come up with a way to preserve large quantities of food.

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Speaker 1: I love prizes as incentives for technological breakthroughs, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: it's an interesting kind of big economic idea. Right, How

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Speaker 1: do you if you're a government and you want some

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Speaker 1: technological breakthrough to emerge in the world, how do you

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Speaker 1: incentivize that Napoleon is not inventing this idea? Right? Decades earlier,

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Speaker 1: the British had famously done something similar for a transportation

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Speaker 1: problem of their own. They needed a way for ships

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Speaker 1: to figure out longitude. Right could figure out latitude by

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Speaker 1: the stars, but longitude was hard, and the British, I

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Speaker 1: guess early in the seventeen hundreds, issued a prize for

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Speaker 1: that and it worked. Somebody invented a clock that works

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Speaker 1: on a ship and that is enough to tell you

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Speaker 1: longitude and this still goes on. Interestingly, this is not

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Speaker 1: some antiquated thing. The one that came to my mind

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Speaker 1: was the DARPA Grand Challenge in the US funded by

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Speaker 1: the US military basically the US government in the early

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Speaker 1: twenty first century, which was for self driving cars, and

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Speaker 1: it really gave birth to the modern self driving car

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Speaker 1: industry that is sort of flourishing today.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So this is what Napoleon does with cans,

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Speaker 2: which are sort of the autonomous vehicles of their day,

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Speaker 2: really sort of right, And the prizes run through something

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Speaker 2: called the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry does

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Speaker 2: exactly what it says, right, and the nation's scientists start.

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Speaker 1: Working on it.

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Speaker 2: But to your point, you could not have predicted who

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Speaker 2: won this prize because it did not go to a

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Speaker 2: scientist or a biologist, someone who worked with the government.

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Speaker 2: It comes from this unlikely hero. His name is Nicholas Francois,

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Speaker 2: a Pierre, not a biologist, not a chemist.

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Speaker 1: He's a chef, perfect par fai.

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Speaker 2: Technically a candy maker, right. He candies fruits and jams.

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Speaker 2: He's sort of famous in Paris, and by all accounts

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Speaker 2: a very jovial guy. Right. He's a candy maker, He's

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Speaker 2: the candy man. He's bald, he has these mischievous devil eyebrows.

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Speaker 2: No training, but he spent his life in hospitality. He

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Speaker 2: bottled wine for the revolutionaries during the fighting. So in

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Speaker 2: seventeen ninety five a pair hears about this prize and

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Speaker 2: in the back of his shop at night, he starts experimenting. Now,

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Speaker 2: at this point, there is no scientific theory for why

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Speaker 2: things spoil. You know, maybe the humors are bad, or

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Speaker 2: demons get into the butter.

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Speaker 1: They know bacteria exists, but they don't know germs cause disease.

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Speaker 1: They don't know what's going on.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Louis Pastor hadn't even been born yet, right, he's

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Speaker 2: going to come in fifty sixty years later. So in

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Speaker 2: his candy shop appairs basically doing trial and error to

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Speaker 2: preserve food. He starts with different containers. He starts with

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Speaker 2: champagne bottles, which apparently is the most popular thing. A

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Speaker 2: rans they're just lying around, but he's.

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Speaker 1: Like, and I guess he's thinking, like wine gets preserved,

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Speaker 1: Champagne is preserved when it's in the bottle. Something's happening there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And honestly, maybe it was the bottle, like they

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Speaker 2: just didn't know, right, So he starts trying preserving food

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Speaker 2: in champagne. Maybe it sort of works sometimes, right, then

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Speaker 2: he has specialty made jars because you know, getting the

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Speaker 2: chicken leg into the champagne bottle. I know we've all

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Speaker 2: tried it. It does not work well. So he starts

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Speaker 2: filling them with different foods. He starts different ways of

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Speaker 2: sealing them, wax, cork, cooking them at different temperatures. Hundreds

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Speaker 2: of bottles he's doing this, He's checking them weeks later,

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Speaker 2: months later. Neighbors report that sometimes they would go into

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Speaker 2: the back of his shop and they would be like

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Speaker 2: meat slurry on the ceiling because his bottles had exploded.

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Speaker 2: And then he had as an insight, right, he'd made champagne,

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Speaker 2: he made wine, and he knows that wine works better,

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Speaker 2: just tastes better if you get all of the air

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Speaker 2: out of it. Doesn't know why, but he's like, well,

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Speaker 2: I'm going to try this with meat. I'm going to

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Speaker 2: essentially take my jar, fill it up to the very

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Speaker 2: top with meat, steal it with no air, and then

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Speaker 2: slowly start boiling it, really get it up to temperature,

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Speaker 2: because you can't have it rapidly boiling or it will explode.

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Speaker 2: He experiments like this for ten years, ten years, ten years, which,

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Speaker 2: if you think about it right, you have to You

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Speaker 2: don't know if it's worked until you've waited a month,

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Speaker 2: two months.

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Speaker 1: It's hard to iterate. You can't get that many iterations

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Speaker 1: in a year.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and so he figures out that like, essentially, if

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Speaker 2: you don't boil it enough, it's going to kill you.

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Speaker 2: But if you boil it too long, the food will

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Speaker 2: be destroyed, you know. So he's thinking about hospitality and

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Speaker 2: how someone will want to eat it. It's not just

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Speaker 2: a technical thing, it's how do I make get appetizing

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Speaker 2: And it seems to be working at this point ten

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Speaker 2: years later. But he has to test it the most

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Speaker 2: extreme tests you can have for a can of food.

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Speaker 2: In eighteen oh sixty, goes to the French Navy with

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Speaker 2: an experiment. He packs eighteen different foods, including green beans, peas, plums, meats,

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Speaker 2: seals them, boils them, hands them to a French captain

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Speaker 2: and says, do your worst. They set sail for four months,

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Speaker 2: the summer heat, the roll of the waves, gnarly sailors,

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Speaker 2: I don't know. Four months later they have a shipboard ceremony.

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Speaker 2: They bring out the jars. One of them is a

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Speaker 2: jar of preserved partridges in gravy, very popular in France

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Speaker 2: at the time. They open it up, doesn't explode, sniff it,

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Speaker 2: it's all right. No mold, smells like stew, and they

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Speaker 2: taste it and the woila in crob fresh as a

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Speaker 2: Montmont cafe sort of probably Partridges, right, this is it, right,

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Speaker 2: No more rancid salt pork for the troops. Like he

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Speaker 2: has solved the problem. In eighteen oh nine, the Society

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Speaker 2: of Encouragement gather as they eat his summer peas in

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Speaker 2: the middle of winter, and they declare a pair the winner.

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Speaker 2: Napoleon personally approves the prize payment, but there is a catch.

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Speaker 2: A pair had a dream of becoming very rich on

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Speaker 2: his discovery. It's not a scientist, he's a businessman. He

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Speaker 2: runs a shop.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: He had already started to sell glass preserved foods at

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Speaker 2: the Maisson de a Paire, his shop.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: He wanted to patent his discovery make a fortune, but

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Speaker 2: the French government said, wait.

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Speaker 1: Just a minute.

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Speaker 2: We know you won, but at this point this is

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Speaker 2: critical technology for the nation. In order to get the prize,

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Speaker 2: you have to publish your findings, show everyone your secrets,

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Speaker 2: but you can't own the intellectual property. That's what the

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Speaker 2: money is for. Yeah, that's what the prize is for.

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Speaker 2: They're buying it from him. They do give him a

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Speaker 2: choice and says, fine, I will take the money and

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Speaker 2: He wrote a book which you can read to this day.

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Speaker 2: I read the whole thing. It's not just about the

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Speaker 2: theory of preserving food. Canning as they called it. By

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Speaker 2: the way, the can is not for the physical can,

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Speaker 2: it's for canister. So jars are canning. Cans are canning.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: The name of his book is the art of preserving

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Speaker 2: all kinds of animal and vegetable substances for many years.

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Speaker 2: So it is like canning for dummies. It's a canning cookbook.

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Speaker 2: It's an exact canning cookbook. Here, read a little bit

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Speaker 2: about the summer peas.

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Speaker 1: Put them in the water bath in order to boil

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Speaker 1: for an hour and a half when the season is

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Speaker 1: cool and moist, and two hours when it's hot and dry. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it depends on the weather. Love that well, this is

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Speaker 1: ten years of experimentation talking.

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Speaker 2: This guy knows right, and so at this point, Like

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Speaker 2: a Pair is pretty famous in France. He publishes this book.

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Speaker 2: Napoleon now has his wagons filled with canned peas. They

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Speaker 2: call it food a la a pear. So a Pair

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Speaker 2: uses his prize to build the first food preservation facility.

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Speaker 2: He is going to make money off of this. He

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Speaker 2: tries and at this point, they're very expensive. This is

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Speaker 2: essentially bespoke, handmade vegetables.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: He sells it only to the very rich of French society,

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Speaker 2: but they're the first people on earth to experience this

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Speaker 2: like radical idea that you did not have to eat

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Speaker 2: what's in season right now.

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Speaker 1: It just never occurred like that.

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Speaker 2: You could have peaches or strawberries if it wasn't the summer.

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Speaker 2: Like that's insane. It just never happened. But all of

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Speaker 2: a sudden you could walk in the middle of a

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Speaker 2: Parisian winter and see all these things and bring them home. Right,

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Speaker 2: it was amazing. Now, at this point Napoleon is in charge,

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Speaker 2: decides he's going to try to take over Europe and

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Speaker 2: be well fed at the same time, and this would

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Speaker 2: come back to bite Nicholas a pair after the break,

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Speaker 2: the military weapon of preserved food leaks.

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Speaker 1: To francis enemies.

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Speaker 2: It's jars versus tins on the battlefield.

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Speaker 1: Okay, we're back from the break. It is time now

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Speaker 1: for the story of Can number two. Can number two.

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Speaker 2: You may recall Heinz Baked Beans technically an American company

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Speaker 2: but very popular in the UK. This is the UK

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Speaker 2: version and this chapter is about the mass market for cans.

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Speaker 2: Mere months after a Pair publishes his strict instructions and

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Speaker 2: how to put food in a jar, a patent application

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Speaker 2: is filed, not in Paris but in London, across the

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Speaker 2: English Channel. And it's not just about jars, like any patent,

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Speaker 2: any good patents out there, it lists everything the inventor

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Speaker 2: can think of, right, all the ways you can think

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Speaker 2: to put food into a container. Bottles yes, jars, yes, pottery,

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Speaker 2: I don't know. It didn't catch on And crucially for

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Speaker 2: our story, iron covered in tin. And surprisingly, the patent

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Speaker 2: is not from our inventor, Nicholas a Pair. It is

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Speaker 2: from a merchant who, as far as we know, had

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Speaker 2: no food experience whatsoever. His name's on various patents through

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Speaker 2: the years. His name is Peter Durant.

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Speaker 1: So it's he like a nineteenth century patent troll, just

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Speaker 1: pile it up intellectual property. Does he start suing people?

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Speaker 1: It's interesting.

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Speaker 2: We don't know what he's up to, But when you

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Speaker 2: look at the fine print of the patent, he doesn't

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Speaker 2: really say it's his idea. He says, I'm quoting here

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Speaker 2: an invention communicated to him by a certain foreigner. Residing

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Speaker 2: abroad are. It does not say who the unnamed foreigner is,

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Speaker 2: but at this point England France are bitter rivals. You

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Speaker 2: can understand why a pair or anyone else wouldn't want

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Speaker 2: to sell military secrets to the British, right, it makes

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Speaker 2: total sense. Napoleon would throw you in jail, kill you.

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Speaker 1: Right now?

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Speaker 2: Is Durand a frontman for Nicholas?

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Speaker 1: A pair? We don't know.

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Speaker 2: We know he's granted this patent in the UK and

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Speaker 2: takes it to the US, and then almost immediately he

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Speaker 2: sells the patent to someone who actually makes it happen

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Speaker 2: for about a thousand quid. Right, So the man who

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Speaker 2: buys the patent is Brian Duncan. And he was exactly

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Speaker 2: what the Can needed. He was just a practical guy

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Speaker 2: who solved problems.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: He developed the first machinery to make paper. I know

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Speaker 2: people had handmade paper, right, and he's the one that said, no,

295
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Speaker 2: you can have giant machines to make paper.

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Speaker 1: Seems remarkably late, but I guess not because the Industrial

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Speaker 1: Revolution had just come along, right. Everything was hand made

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Speaker 1: until basically they.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and he had already patented and manufactured the first

300
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Speaker 2: steel pen, which if you think about it, a pen

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Speaker 2: is like a can.

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Speaker 1: For ink, a tiny can, a tiny thin can for ink.

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Speaker 2: So Brian Duncan already had a factory like ready to go,

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Speaker 2: and at this point you could sort of see that

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Speaker 2: like military and governments are good encouraging innovation, and they're

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Speaker 2: great as first purchasers of products because they'll pay anything, right,

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Speaker 2: but they're not the best at creating cheap, efficient products.

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Speaker 2: And for preserved foods to become a worldwide phenomenon, this

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Speaker 2: is going to take a half century of Brian Duncan's work, right.

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Speaker 1: This is an important idea. You hear it all the

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Speaker 1: time now from people starting companies. This idea that we

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Speaker 1: think about the breakthrough the prototype, but in fact, going

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Speaker 1: from the prototype, which is sort of where France, this

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Speaker 1: is a little bit past that, but it's not at scale,

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Speaker 1: it's not for everybody. It's this military technology that rich

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Speaker 1: people are also using. Going from that to the cheap

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Speaker 1: ubiquitous thing is in many ways harder and more important

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Speaker 1: than the initial breakthrough.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and in fact, we think about patents right as

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Speaker 2: this protection for the inventor, but it's more than that,

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Speaker 2: Like patents are away for someone to have a protection

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Speaker 2: while they do what you're talking about, while they perfect

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Speaker 2: the technology and make it actually happen well.

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Speaker 1: And the other thing about patents is they force you

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Speaker 1: to share how to do it, which is part of

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Speaker 1: the idea. You could keep it a trade secret if

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Speaker 1: you want. If you figure something out, you could just

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Speaker 1: not tell anybody and own it for as long as

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Speaker 1: nobody else figures it out.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Coca Cola didn't patent the precise and stamos for

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Speaker 2: Coca Cola.

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Speaker 1: So the patent is a trade off. You get to

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Speaker 1: own the intellectual property for a fixed amount of time

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Speaker 1: and then everybody knows.

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Speaker 2: Now Brian Doncan has to actually make this happen at scale.

336
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Speaker 2: They decide they're going to go for cans. No more

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Speaker 2: exploding bottles, right, it doesn't make any sense right to

338
00:19:02,920 --> 00:19:06,960
Speaker 2: try and transport food long distances in glass. And also,

339
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Speaker 2: just as France had a lot of champagne bottling technology,

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Speaker 2: Britain at this point is the leader in metal technology.

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Speaker 2: So Brian Duncan and its partners Gamble and Hall, I believe,

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Speaker 2: and it's Dunk and Gamble and Hall or Duncan, holl

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Speaker 2: and Gamble something like that. They take this suspicious pattern,

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Speaker 2: and they get to work and they immediately see that

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Speaker 2: metal is the way to go for the future of

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Speaker 2: canning technology because glass is kind of stupid. Right, You're

347
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Speaker 2: trying to transport food and glass and you have to

348
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Speaker 2: like treat it like a little baby. And they'd already

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Speaker 2: been developing cooking utensils which were made of iron but

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Speaker 2: covered in tin. So you have the iron makes it

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Speaker 2: strong and cheap, right, but you have this non reactive

352
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Speaker 2: tin coating so that everything doesn't taste like iron.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: And so in eighteen twelve Duncan sets up the first

355
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Speaker 2: can factory. And to your point about innovations, right, the

356
00:20:00,680 --> 00:20:03,840
Speaker 2: first cans do not look like this the cans we

357
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Speaker 2: have today.

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Speaker 1: They're not thin at all. What do they look like.

359
00:20:07,920 --> 00:20:11,359
Speaker 2: They are four to twenty pounds apiece, they have thick

360
00:20:11,560 --> 00:20:14,919
Speaker 2: sodder seams of lead. They're about the size of a

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Speaker 2: paint can. And Donkan can make six of them per hour.

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Speaker 1: Technology. I mean, it's not gonna feed the.

363
00:20:23,119 --> 00:20:27,040
Speaker 2: World yet, it's gonna get better, right, But Duncan is

364
00:20:27,080 --> 00:20:30,760
Speaker 2: already thinking like a marketer. So as soon as he's

365
00:20:30,800 --> 00:20:35,119
Speaker 2: got this giant kettle bill filled with meat, he sends

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Speaker 2: it off to the Duke of Wellington and the Royal family.

367
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Speaker 2: You know, you gotta try this, right. I'm sure that

368
00:20:40,600 --> 00:20:43,160
Speaker 2: they don't open them themselves. They have people for this,

369
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Speaker 2: but they bring it to the table and they love it.

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Speaker 1: They love it.

371
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Speaker 2: The Royal family is like, this is perfection, tasty, right.

372
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Speaker 2: So he's got that stamp of approval, gets government contracts

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Speaker 2: for the British Army, British Navy.

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Speaker 1: They'll pay anything for this, right.

375
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Speaker 2: Because they're now fighting Napoleon, you know, so setting aside

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00:21:00,040 --> 00:21:02,560
Speaker 2: like the military strategy, you know, you could picture the

377
00:21:02,600 --> 00:21:05,240
Speaker 2: Battle of Waterloo. However you picture the Battle of Waterloo,

378
00:21:05,280 --> 00:21:08,600
Speaker 2: I picture it as the French eating partridges in gravy

379
00:21:08,760 --> 00:21:11,679
Speaker 2: stored in bottles, and on the British side roast beef

380
00:21:11,800 --> 00:21:14,720
Speaker 2: and carrot soup. I never finished the story of our

381
00:21:14,760 --> 00:21:18,760
Speaker 2: French candy maker, Nicholas, a pair legend. He tried to

382
00:21:18,800 --> 00:21:21,399
Speaker 2: stay in the canning business. He built a factory in

383
00:21:21,440 --> 00:21:23,960
Speaker 2: the town of Massi, outside Paris and France. He was

384
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Speaker 2: making a go at marketing the technology. He was even

385
00:21:26,840 --> 00:21:32,639
Speaker 2: experimenting with square cans la la I know, easier to stack,

386
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Speaker 2: easier to ship.

387
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Speaker 1: Aikia I feel like Aikia should be making square cans

388
00:21:37,160 --> 00:21:38,200
Speaker 1: flat pack cans.

389
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Speaker 2: It has more weak points, I know, but you know,

390
00:21:42,080 --> 00:21:44,480
Speaker 2: a pair is like trying to make this happen. But

391
00:21:44,600 --> 00:21:48,320
Speaker 2: in eighteen fourteen, his main man, Napoleon, plunged the entire

392
00:21:48,320 --> 00:21:53,680
Speaker 2: continent into war. Remember Prussian and Austrian forces destroy his factory.

393
00:21:54,280 --> 00:21:57,200
Speaker 2: Huh karma, You know you help the military and the

394
00:21:57,240 --> 00:22:00,600
Speaker 2: military comes back to bite you. The government let him

395
00:22:00,640 --> 00:22:03,119
Speaker 2: rebuild in Paris, gave him money to switch from glass

396
00:22:03,119 --> 00:22:06,240
Speaker 2: bottles to tin. Then the politics change and the government

397
00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:09,440
Speaker 2: evicted him, and he wrote a letter to them. He said,

398
00:22:09,480 --> 00:22:12,159
Speaker 2: I gave my life to science and to mankind. You

399
00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:14,960
Speaker 2: are taking away the premises I thought ought to be mine.

400
00:22:16,160 --> 00:22:19,080
Speaker 2: Then he passed away in eighteen forty one. He was poor.

401
00:22:19,359 --> 00:22:23,160
Speaker 2: He's buried in a pauper's grave, but we hope he's

402
00:22:23,200 --> 00:22:29,359
Speaker 2: perfectly preserved. So Donkin's already thinking bigger than Nicholas. Epero

403
00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:31,840
Speaker 2: is still over in France, and he realizes that like, yeah,

404
00:22:31,880 --> 00:22:35,240
Speaker 2: you can sell it to the military, but really that's

405
00:22:35,240 --> 00:22:38,480
Speaker 2: an ad. That's an ad to sell it to everyone else.

406
00:22:39,119 --> 00:22:43,119
Speaker 2: So Donkin's agents start taking these giant cans. Imagine these

407
00:22:43,200 --> 00:22:46,880
Speaker 2: agents were very burly, giant muscles, right, and they start

408
00:22:46,880 --> 00:22:49,840
Speaker 2: taking them to the wharves where the ships are, to

409
00:22:49,880 --> 00:22:53,639
Speaker 2: the port towns, saying like, oh, the royal family loves it.

410
00:22:53,800 --> 00:22:55,880
Speaker 2: We sold it to the British Navy. Don't you want

411
00:22:55,920 --> 00:22:58,840
Speaker 2: to take this on your travels around the world. So

412
00:22:58,880 --> 00:23:02,639
Speaker 2: they would sell this as like this chance to dine

413
00:23:02,760 --> 00:23:05,480
Speaker 2: like a king out on the water. At the time,

414
00:23:05,880 --> 00:23:08,400
Speaker 2: there was a problem of scurvy. And I'm sure you've

415
00:23:08,440 --> 00:23:10,960
Speaker 2: heard about this, right. Scurvy we know now is a

416
00:23:10,960 --> 00:23:13,200
Speaker 2: shortage of vitamin C. And if you go on long

417
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:16,480
Speaker 2: voyages and you're not eating fruits and vegetables, you have

418
00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:19,600
Speaker 2: a shortage of vitamin C and your gums start to

419
00:23:19,640 --> 00:23:22,919
Speaker 2: bleed and you start to bruise and have these hemorrhages.

420
00:23:23,160 --> 00:23:26,480
Speaker 2: Like it's a terrible situation. And up to this time

421
00:23:26,520 --> 00:23:28,720
Speaker 2: it was a huge problem for navies around the world

422
00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:31,000
Speaker 2: because they'd be gone on voyages for months and months

423
00:23:31,040 --> 00:23:34,320
Speaker 2: and months at a time, and Duncan's agents would would

424
00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:35,320
Speaker 2: hustle the ship.

425
00:23:35,119 --> 00:23:36,880
Speaker 1: Captains to take some aboard. Right.

426
00:23:36,960 --> 00:23:39,760
Speaker 2: He's like, when you're in the latitudes in the south Sea,

427
00:23:39,840 --> 00:23:42,520
Speaker 2: you can bring a little bit of British meat with you.

428
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:46,680
Speaker 2: Dogan's company also sells the cans to what I consider

429
00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:52,439
Speaker 2: the influencer of the eighteen hundreds. I am referring, of course,

430
00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:57,880
Speaker 2: to the explorer. Oh, you know with the with the hat,

431
00:23:57,960 --> 00:24:01,800
Speaker 2: the pith helmet, and the little and the khakis. Right now,

432
00:24:01,840 --> 00:24:05,800
Speaker 2: at this point explorers are really starting to make progress

433
00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:08,000
Speaker 2: in the Arctic and Antarctic.

434
00:24:07,520 --> 00:24:09,520
Speaker 1: Not so much the pith helmet and khakis.

435
00:24:10,040 --> 00:24:11,840
Speaker 2: I picture them up there right now though they have

436
00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:14,960
Speaker 2: the the first fur covered in yeah, and the coats

437
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:15,639
Speaker 2: made of seals.

438
00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:16,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

439
00:24:16,600 --> 00:24:19,560
Speaker 2: So this is the age where men would join the

440
00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:22,640
Speaker 2: Explorers club, right, and they would raise money for these

441
00:24:22,680 --> 00:24:25,879
Speaker 2: big expeditions, and so it was a little bit like

442
00:24:25,920 --> 00:24:28,639
Speaker 2: an influence. These people were famous and they would be

443
00:24:28,680 --> 00:24:30,680
Speaker 2: out on the ice for several years. You wouldn't know

444
00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:33,240
Speaker 2: what's going to happen to them, and they'd come back triumphant,

445
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:36,280
Speaker 2: all without eating a single vegetable for years. So it

446
00:24:36,359 --> 00:24:39,280
Speaker 2: was a problem from a can point of view. So

447
00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:44,320
Speaker 2: Duncan his company send their tinnedveal stew to one of

448
00:24:44,320 --> 00:24:47,080
Speaker 2: the most famous explorers of the time, Sir Joseph Banks.

449
00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:49,159
Speaker 2: He had saled with Captain James Cook, he was a

450
00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:52,080
Speaker 2: member of the Royal Society, and Banks sat down to

451
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:55,440
Speaker 2: dine on the two year old canned veal and declared

452
00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:58,679
Speaker 2: it one of the most important discoveries of.

453
00:24:58,680 --> 00:24:59,520
Speaker 1: The age we live in.

454
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:02,720
Speaker 2: Huh and this man new discoveries, the new discoveries.

455
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:04,920
Speaker 1: It is a real breakthrough. We're kind of making fun

456
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 1: of it, but it's real.

457
00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:09,920
Speaker 2: It's absolutely real, right, because you immediately see this as

458
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:14,160
Speaker 2: a tool. The can is a tool well for military conquest,

459
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:16,320
Speaker 2: but it's a tool for exploration, and soon it will

460
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:20,400
Speaker 2: be a tool to transform, you know, the way countries worked.

461
00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:23,920
Speaker 1: Really, there was no refrigeration. To state what is perhaps obvious,

462
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:28,399
Speaker 1: it's just hard for us to understand the scarcity of

463
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:32,520
Speaker 1: fresh food at that time. In the winter, even on land,

464
00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:35,400
Speaker 1: people would get sick at the end of the winter.

465
00:25:35,440 --> 00:25:37,600
Speaker 1: There was this thing called winter sickness because you wouldn't

466
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:39,520
Speaker 1: eat fresh food all winter, so that by the time

467
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:42,200
Speaker 1: spring came, everybody would be kind of sick.

468
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:46,240
Speaker 2: Exactly right. And this is what Sir Joseph Banks saw.

469
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:49,000
Speaker 2: It's just that at the time only the military and

470
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:51,520
Speaker 2: the explorers had the money to buy it. Soon everyone would,

471
00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:55,160
Speaker 2: but at this moment it is for the well funded.

472
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:55,400
Speaker 1: Right.

473
00:25:55,920 --> 00:26:00,480
Speaker 2: So there is this one dramatic moment that seals the

474
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 2: legend of the ten William Perry is in the Arctic

475
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 2: on his ship HMS Fury. Love those names, HIMS Fury,

476
00:26:09,160 --> 00:26:11,719
Speaker 2: and as often happened, maybe happen every time they get

477
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:14,320
Speaker 2: trap and the ice flows right, the ice starts to

478
00:26:14,359 --> 00:26:16,480
Speaker 2: crush the ship and they decide they have to abandon

479
00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:19,760
Speaker 2: ship go over land, right, so they throw all the

480
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:20,840
Speaker 2: cans out onto the ice.

481
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:22,160
Speaker 1: They drag them to a beach.

482
00:26:22,359 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 2: They take a few of the cans and takes the months,

483
00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:27,160
Speaker 2: but they eventually get to safety.

484
00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:27,440
Speaker 1: Right.

485
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:31,840
Speaker 2: Four years later, another explorer, John Ross, trying the same thing,

486
00:26:32,840 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 2: same thing happens to him. He also get stuck in

487
00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:38,400
Speaker 2: the ice, except his men are hungry and they are desperate,

488
00:26:38,920 --> 00:26:44,520
Speaker 2: but they stumble upon the cans. Perry's cans from HMS

489
00:26:44,560 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 2: Fury are on the beach. They open the cans.

490
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 1: It's four years later, saves their lives. Cans. It's so impressive.

491
00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:55,440
Speaker 1: I can't believe it's because they're heavy.

492
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:58,159
Speaker 2: They take one of these cans back to London to

493
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:01,239
Speaker 2: show everyone the cans saved our lives, and you can

494
00:27:01,280 --> 00:27:04,159
Speaker 2: still see the can at the Science Museum in London.

495
00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:08,600
Speaker 1: Is the meat still good? Great question?

496
00:27:09,440 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 2: In the nineteen thirties, so this is like a hundred

497
00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:15,240
Speaker 2: year after it was canned. Right in the nineteen thirties,

498
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:19,439
Speaker 2: scientists open it for analysis to quote them, it was

499
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:20,640
Speaker 2: in perfect condition.

500
00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:25,479
Speaker 1: Did they eat it? They did not eat it.

501
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 2: They reportedly fed it to laboratory mice and a cat,

502
00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:31,360
Speaker 2: all of which survived.

503
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:34,560
Speaker 1: Okay, heay, until the mouse was eaten by the cat.

504
00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:37,680
Speaker 2: That does happen. They can't the scientists can't prevent nature, right.

505
00:27:38,359 --> 00:27:40,560
Speaker 2: So Donk and his company have now locked up the

506
00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:42,919
Speaker 2: government contracts the explorers.

507
00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:44,280
Speaker 1: There's other competitors. Now.

508
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:48,479
Speaker 2: They just need a way to convince regular people that

509
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:52,240
Speaker 2: everyone needs canned foods, right, And this is a harder

510
00:27:52,320 --> 00:27:54,600
Speaker 2: sell because if you think about it, up to this

511
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:58,439
Speaker 2: point in history, you probably never bought food that you

512
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:03,280
Speaker 2: didn't see, that you couldn't actually inspect. Right. So for

513
00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:07,320
Speaker 2: the regular person they're like, oh, yeah, there's a fish

514
00:28:07,320 --> 00:28:08,440
Speaker 2: inside this can.

515
00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:09,879
Speaker 1: You'd be like, I don't know.

516
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 2: You're operating on trust, and maybe there wasn't a lot

517
00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:15,880
Speaker 2: of trust, especially about industrial things at the time, right,

518
00:28:16,080 --> 00:28:17,639
Speaker 2: especially industrial food.

519
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 1: Another level of trust required which really didn't exist.

520
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:26,640
Speaker 2: Right, So eighteen fifty two, unfortunately for the can industry,

521
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:30,359
Speaker 2: the newspapers are filled with the Great Can Scandal.

522
00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:34,480
Speaker 1: Putting the can back into the scandal, the s candle scandal.

523
00:28:34,560 --> 00:28:38,080
Speaker 2: Right, A group of meat inspectors were opening cans bound

524
00:28:38,120 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 2: for the Royal Navy. First can rotten, second can spoiled.

525
00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 2: It wasn't until the nineteenth can that they found one

526
00:28:48,280 --> 00:28:52,920
Speaker 2: that they said a human could eat. So the technology

527
00:28:53,600 --> 00:28:57,520
Speaker 2: of cans was mostly working. It was the contents and

528
00:28:57,560 --> 00:29:01,080
Speaker 2: what they put into the can that was completely gross.

529
00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:03,920
Speaker 2: Now at this point there are a lot of competitors

530
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:06,760
Speaker 2: making cans, putting food into cans, and one of them

531
00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 2: figured out, well, if nobody can see inside, why don't

532
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 2: I put the cheapest meat I can and possibly find

533
00:29:13,320 --> 00:29:16,160
Speaker 2: into these cans, Jacob, I want you to read from

534
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:17,920
Speaker 2: the newspaper coverage at the time.

535
00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:21,440
Speaker 1: So this is a list of what they found inside

536
00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 1: the cans. Pieces of heart, coagulated blood, pieces of liver,

537
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:31,920
Speaker 1: ligaments of the throat, pieces of intestines in short, garbage

538
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:34,400
Speaker 1: and putridity in a horrible state.

539
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:37,080
Speaker 2: And those weren't even on the paper on the outside

540
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 2: of the can.

541
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:41,360
Speaker 1: Even say garbage or putridity on the list of ingredients.

542
00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:46,360
Speaker 2: Apparently they even found a dog's tongue. They trace the

543
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:51,160
Speaker 2: problem back to Romania or Moldova, depending on which sources

544
00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:53,400
Speaker 2: you use. I take it they didn't write that on

545
00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:57,560
Speaker 2: the can either, right, huge pr scandal. Inspectors around the

546
00:29:57,560 --> 00:30:00,120
Speaker 2: globe start to spot check cans. They find the same thing,

547
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:04,200
Speaker 2: lousy meat inside. Everyone's reading about this, as you can imagine,

548
00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:06,480
Speaker 2: like what do they find today in the cans? The

549
00:30:06,560 --> 00:30:11,280
Speaker 2: can manufacturers strike back with a huge advertising campaign. They

550
00:30:11,320 --> 00:30:15,760
Speaker 2: have you know, testimonial and pain kidding, Oh that doesn't

551
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 2: work there. They have testimonials, awards awarded for you know,

552
00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:23,360
Speaker 2: the fine meat service, right, seals of approval. They start

553
00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:26,880
Speaker 2: to pitch the nutritional claims. They do can demos at

554
00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:30,959
Speaker 2: fares and expos There's stunts like they had this public

555
00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 2: dinner prepared solely from Can meats that only cost a

556
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:36,760
Speaker 2: penny for you to come and eat it. Yeah, I know, right,

557
00:30:37,080 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 2: And as we talked about last week in our show

558
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 2: about the grocery chain A and P, this is the

559
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 2: birth of the brand. They're really starting to signal there

560
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:48,080
Speaker 2: are no dog tongues in this can.

561
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:52,240
Speaker 1: Well, A brand is truly valuable in this context. Yeah,

562
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:55,040
Speaker 1: you literally can't see inside the can. For one thing,

563
00:30:55,360 --> 00:30:58,959
Speaker 1: the industrialization of food means you're getting farther from the source.

564
00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:03,360
Speaker 1: And today I feel like we primarily think of brands

565
00:31:03,440 --> 00:31:08,040
Speaker 1: as sort of superficial marketing tools. Maybe maybe not, but

566
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:11,760
Speaker 1: truly brands can signal quality. If some people are putting

567
00:31:12,360 --> 00:31:15,320
Speaker 1: rotten meat inside their cans and you reliably are not,

568
00:31:16,080 --> 00:31:19,640
Speaker 1: that is meaningful. A brand is meaningful in that context.

569
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:21,600
Speaker 2: And they're starting to realize you can have different brands

570
00:31:21,600 --> 00:31:25,240
Speaker 2: for different people. The sales aspect of this, apparently they

571
00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 2: sold cans to women called My Lady Can and Little

572
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:30,760
Speaker 2: Duchess Can.

573
00:31:30,680 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: The Virginia Slimbs of Cans.

574
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:40,280
Speaker 2: Exactly for men, Jack tar Brand and Sailors Savories.

575
00:31:40,760 --> 00:31:44,320
Speaker 1: Oh manly Canley go down to the pub.

576
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 2: And have some Sailors Savories. And perhaps most importantly of all,

577
00:31:49,520 --> 00:31:54,160
Speaker 2: in the marketing of the can, they developed the can opener.

578
00:31:54,760 --> 00:31:58,360
Speaker 1: Wait, yes, and decades. I didn't even think of the cannabies.

579
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:00,640
Speaker 1: What were they doing before this? How did you open

580
00:32:00,640 --> 00:32:03,840
Speaker 1: a can? Before the can open? Years since the first

581
00:32:04,360 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 1: how did you open a can for fifty years?

582
00:32:06,680 --> 00:32:09,960
Speaker 2: So it boggles the mind on some of the cans.

583
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:14,480
Speaker 2: They had instructions which were get a hammer and a chisel,

584
00:32:14,680 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 2: and just like dun't dunk, dunk, dun't dun't dunk to

585
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:20,000
Speaker 2: open the can.

586
00:32:20,400 --> 00:32:24,640
Speaker 1: I am a ghast it does. Here's a question. Here's

587
00:32:24,680 --> 00:32:28,600
Speaker 1: a question, what is a thing today where we have

588
00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 1: the can but not the can opener? Where once some

589
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:33,480
Speaker 1: new thing is going to be invented, they're like, how

590
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:36,760
Speaker 1: did you go so long without the thing? To use

591
00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:39,240
Speaker 1: the thing? What would it be? I don't you know.

592
00:32:39,280 --> 00:32:41,400
Speaker 2: I was thinking about all the chords and everything, and

593
00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:43,480
Speaker 2: I know they're starting to solve that with the just

594
00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:45,640
Speaker 2: placing something down and charge.

595
00:32:45,840 --> 00:32:48,680
Speaker 1: A dream of where you're just in an electric field

596
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:52,120
Speaker 1: where your thing is is charging just ambiently. I don't

597
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:54,720
Speaker 1: know the physics of that, but yes, maybe someday they'll

598
00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:56,719
Speaker 1: be like, you had to plug in your things all

599
00:32:56,760 --> 00:32:59,840
Speaker 1: the time, how did you live? Okay? The can opener.

600
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:04,560
Speaker 2: Now everyone's using a hammer and chisel. I was thinking

601
00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:10,880
Speaker 2: about this, and perhaps the notion of convenience wasn't associated

602
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 2: with food. In the eighteen hundreds. You had specialists cooks

603
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:17,920
Speaker 2: and chefs, and you know at the time housewives who

604
00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:21,440
Speaker 2: would spend all day cooking. There was no easy, fast

605
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:23,920
Speaker 2: way to do anything in the kitchen.

606
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:27,920
Speaker 1: So it's like you already have peas from six months ago,

607
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:30,440
Speaker 1: this miracle. Oh now you're saying it's too hard to open.

608
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:33,600
Speaker 1: Nobody to take the time. My hammer is way over there.

609
00:33:33,840 --> 00:33:37,320
Speaker 2: My chisel, Who is my chisel. The first can opener

610
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:41,600
Speaker 2: was developed by Ezra Warner, and I saw a picture

611
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 2: of it. It looks like basically a piece of metal

612
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:47,400
Speaker 2: a little hook on it. It looks a little bit

613
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:49,800
Speaker 2: like the kind of can openers you get at a

614
00:33:49,840 --> 00:33:50,520
Speaker 2: camping store.

615
00:33:50,760 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 1: Those are terrible can openers where you have to kind

616
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:55,760
Speaker 1: of hook it every time. There's no way you're sawing

617
00:33:55,840 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 1: the can. All the sharp edges, oh so sharp.

618
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:02,040
Speaker 2: So once you do this, it's not just that the

619
00:34:02,240 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 2: edge is sharp, but it's jagged and.

620
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:07,360
Speaker 1: It's extremely hard to open. Again, I would rather use

621
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:11,240
Speaker 1: a hammer and chisel. It was terrible, but people.

622
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:14,799
Speaker 2: Started to buy it, and some stores would stock one

623
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 2: single can opener and they would open the can for

624
00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:20,120
Speaker 2: you before you left. Oh yeah, I'm having peas tonight.

625
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:23,839
Speaker 2: The rotary design didn't come until eighteen seventy, and.

626
00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:28,080
Speaker 1: Such a beautiful tool that has the two little gears

627
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 1: and the handle. I love a can opener.

628
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:33,480
Speaker 2: By the end of the eighteen hundreds, cans were something

629
00:34:33,560 --> 00:34:36,480
Speaker 2: everyone could buy, and they did. Everyone forgot about the

630
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:38,880
Speaker 2: dog tongue. I will personally never forget about it. But

631
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:41,840
Speaker 2: everyone forgot about this. And it was helped along by

632
00:34:41,880 --> 00:34:45,480
Speaker 2: this huge movement of rural folks into the city. So

633
00:34:45,600 --> 00:34:49,839
Speaker 2: industrialization was reducing the labor needed on farms. Factories were

634
00:34:49,840 --> 00:34:53,320
Speaker 2: opening in the cities. People were coming into crowded areas

635
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:56,000
Speaker 2: of New York and Chicago, and it's really hard to

636
00:34:56,000 --> 00:35:00,120
Speaker 2: get fresh foods into the city, into the tenements and apartments,

637
00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:04,000
Speaker 2: and cans were the answer. The killer app for cans

638
00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:06,800
Speaker 2: condensed milk, because.

639
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:08,880
Speaker 1: You're in the city. I thought it was the can opener.

640
00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 2: No, the stuff inside the condensed milk milk made by

641
00:35:13,600 --> 00:35:17,520
Speaker 2: Borden In eighteen fifty six. They would put the milk

642
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:19,600
Speaker 2: in the can in Connecticut and bring it down to

643
00:35:19,680 --> 00:35:22,760
Speaker 2: New York City and people were like, oh, this reminds

644
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:25,759
Speaker 2: me of having a cow, except very sweet. As we

645
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:26,920
Speaker 2: know with condensed milk.

646
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:30,160
Speaker 1: Because again, refrigeration, cold chain is still not a thing.

647
00:35:30,200 --> 00:35:33,480
Speaker 1: If you live in a city, it's hard to get

648
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:36,560
Speaker 1: milk they used to have. I think it was cows

649
00:35:36,680 --> 00:35:40,960
Speaker 1: in Central Park in Manhattan for the milk. For the milk,

650
00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:43,080
Speaker 1: if I recall correctly, like they would give it to

651
00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 1: the children or something.

652
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:49,400
Speaker 2: Campbell Soup eighteen ninety five. Huh, same year our can

653
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:52,240
Speaker 2: of Hines baked beans.

654
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:53,800
Speaker 1: It's a US company.

655
00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 2: But a year later they debuted in the UK, and

656
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:59,680
Speaker 2: for reasons I will never understand, the British decide to

657
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:00,040
Speaker 2: eat it.

658
00:35:59,960 --> 00:36:03,640
Speaker 1: For breakfast with sausage and tomatoes. Seems incredible. It's a

659
00:36:03,640 --> 00:36:07,319
Speaker 1: whole it's a whole thing, right, full English. We'll be

660
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:31,960
Speaker 1: back in a minute with one more can. Robert Smith,

661
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:36,480
Speaker 1: it is time for our story to arrive in twentieth

662
00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:39,080
Speaker 1: century America, USA.

663
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:43,880
Speaker 2: Development of the aluminum beer can, the silver bullet on

664
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:45,200
Speaker 2: the corporate battlefield.

665
00:36:45,880 --> 00:36:46,760
Speaker 1: See what you did there.

666
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 2: By the twentieth century food cans look pretty much like

667
00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:55,400
Speaker 2: they do today, standardized size, thinner walls. But these little things,

668
00:36:55,800 --> 00:37:00,120
Speaker 2: I would argue, have transformed the earth. It's easier for

669
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:02,879
Speaker 2: people to move food, so now it's easier to move

670
00:37:02,920 --> 00:37:08,440
Speaker 2: to the cities. Also transformed farming. Think about this for

671
00:37:08,480 --> 00:37:11,600
Speaker 2: a moment. If you're growing tomatoes in the eighteen hundreds

672
00:37:11,640 --> 00:37:15,480
Speaker 2: in New Jersey. With cans, there is no limit to

673
00:37:15,520 --> 00:37:19,360
Speaker 2: the amount of tomatoes that you can grow. Because you

674
00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:21,000
Speaker 2: could put them in a can, you could sell them

675
00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:24,960
Speaker 2: years later, and this is just one thousand miles away. Also,

676
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:28,000
Speaker 2: as we saw in the last episode, cans now make

677
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:31,800
Speaker 2: it easier for grocery stores to open all the logistics chains,

678
00:37:32,120 --> 00:37:34,800
Speaker 2: and all of these things mean cheaper food. You mentioned

679
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:38,160
Speaker 2: our story about A and P how expensive food was

680
00:37:39,040 --> 00:37:41,840
Speaker 2: for people. Now you can eat out of cans, and

681
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:44,880
Speaker 2: you have an economy of scale at some margin emerging

682
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:50,200
Speaker 2: for food. So as the scale grows, it is perhaps

683
00:37:50,200 --> 00:37:57,160
Speaker 2: inevitable that a behemoth will emerge. On March twentieth, nineteen

684
00:37:57,200 --> 00:37:59,759
Speaker 2: oh one, it's kind of amazing there's this happened on

685
00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 2: one day. A bunch of rich people finally pull off

686
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:06,879
Speaker 2: their plan to combine ninety percent of America's tin can

687
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:10,960
Speaker 2: manufacturers into one giant. Do they call it can Co?

688
00:38:11,160 --> 00:38:11,520
Speaker 1: They do not.

689
00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:13,840
Speaker 2: They call it the American Can Company.

690
00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: I love, I love those turn of the twentieth century names.

691
00:38:17,080 --> 00:38:20,279
Speaker 1: You just say, what the company does us steel, American

692
00:38:20,360 --> 00:38:25,279
Speaker 1: Can Company, I mean American was right there. One hundred

693
00:38:25,360 --> 00:38:27,120
Speaker 1: years later, one hundred percent. They would have called it

694
00:38:27,239 --> 00:38:32,600
Speaker 1: American who can you can? American? Thank you for calling

695
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:33,840
Speaker 1: it the American Can Company.

696
00:38:34,160 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 2: One hundred and twenty three factories from Brooklyn to Seattle.

697
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:40,839
Speaker 2: And even in the emerging age of monopolies, this one

698
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:43,240
Speaker 2: was huge. People called it the tin Can Trust.

699
00:38:43,440 --> 00:38:46,799
Speaker 1: Yes, this was the trust era, and weirdly, even though

700
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:49,760
Speaker 1: anti trust laws had been passed a few decades before this,

701
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: this was this era when they were essentially not enforced.

702
00:38:53,640 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 1: Was this a JP Morgan move? This sounds extremely JP Morgan,

703
00:38:57,320 --> 00:39:01,640
Speaker 1: JP Morgan wannabes, But it was a dream team of capitalists.

704
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:05,040
Speaker 1: You had William the Judge Moore was an actual judge

705
00:39:05,080 --> 00:39:08,320
Speaker 1: at some point who created trust like the National Biscuit Company,

706
00:39:08,600 --> 00:39:13,600
Speaker 1: the Meisco and Diamond match Still, yeah, there's some match

707
00:39:13,680 --> 00:39:15,759
Speaker 1: king story that somebody told me to do. Put it

708
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:17,200
Speaker 1: on the list. On the list.

709
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:19,799
Speaker 2: You had Daniel the Czar read. I don't know why

710
00:39:19,800 --> 00:39:23,280
Speaker 2: I was called that. He was the steel baron, William Leeds,

711
00:39:23,320 --> 00:39:27,240
Speaker 2: who was the tin plate King, William Tinplate leads Tinny

712
00:39:28,040 --> 00:39:30,840
Speaker 2: and someone who actually knew how to make food in

713
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:35,200
Speaker 2: a can helpful Edwin Norton. And Edwin became the president

714
00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:37,960
Speaker 2: of the trust and it was clever how they did it.

715
00:39:38,400 --> 00:39:41,280
Speaker 2: They went to all these different can manufacturers and said,

716
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:42,720
Speaker 2: you know, we want to do a deal. We wanted

717
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:44,080
Speaker 2: to close on this one.

718
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:48,319
Speaker 1: Date tanufacturers and stop one stop, keep going.

719
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:51,920
Speaker 2: The team already controlled much of the tin supply, so

720
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:54,879
Speaker 2: it was, you know, a carrot stick situation on the manufacturers.

721
00:39:54,920 --> 00:39:56,920
Speaker 2: They said, oh, you know, it would be a shame

722
00:39:57,000 --> 00:39:59,200
Speaker 2: if you suddenly had to pay more for your tin supply.

723
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:02,120
Speaker 2: You're really going to want to sell your can company

724
00:40:02,120 --> 00:40:06,840
Speaker 2: to us. And then when the can manufacturers were scared,

725
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:10,879
Speaker 2: they offered very large checks for the factories to sell out,

726
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 2: and all they had to do he was promised that

727
00:40:13,160 --> 00:40:15,960
Speaker 2: they could not re enter the canned business for fifteen years.

728
00:40:16,080 --> 00:40:17,480
Speaker 1: It's so anti competitive.

729
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:20,919
Speaker 2: One hundred and twenty three factories. They did some calculations

730
00:40:20,960 --> 00:40:23,440
Speaker 2: afterwards and looked at how much they paid for all

731
00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:26,080
Speaker 2: these companies, and it was pretty clear that they could

732
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:28,280
Speaker 2: have just built new factories for the same.

733
00:40:28,200 --> 00:40:29,840
Speaker 1: Price, but then they would have had to compete.

734
00:40:30,440 --> 00:40:34,080
Speaker 2: Then they would have had to compete. So instead, of course,

735
00:40:34,120 --> 00:40:36,600
Speaker 2: they take these companies and what's the first thing they do.

736
00:40:37,719 --> 00:40:40,160
Speaker 2: They shut a bunch of them down, seventy percent of

737
00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:43,160
Speaker 2: the factories were just like, you're out of business, close

738
00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:46,240
Speaker 2: them down, fire everybody, and then.

739
00:40:46,680 --> 00:40:50,800
Speaker 1: Jack up prices. What do you suppress supply any raise prices.

740
00:40:50,520 --> 00:40:53,400
Speaker 2: Book, we've talked about monopolies that are they really a monopoly,

741
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:55,200
Speaker 2: that this was a monotony.

742
00:40:54,960 --> 00:40:57,520
Speaker 1: Leaning into it. They're the guy with the top hat

743
00:40:57,600 --> 00:40:58,520
Speaker 1: on the board, dude.

744
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:00,799
Speaker 2: One of the things we're learning in the show is

745
00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 2: that really pulling off a true monopoly.

746
00:41:04,080 --> 00:41:05,320
Speaker 1: Is very difficult.

747
00:41:05,719 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 2: Yes, they bought almost all the factories, shut them down,

748
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:12,440
Speaker 2: raise prices, but at that point now it is much

749
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 2: more profitable to get into the can business.

750
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:17,719
Speaker 1: It's not like they have intellectual property. It's not like

751
00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:20,960
Speaker 1: they can prevent other people from making tin cans. Tin

752
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:25,239
Speaker 1: cans are basically a commodity, and there is this truism

753
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:28,360
Speaker 1: in commodities, which is the cure for high prices is

754
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:32,600
Speaker 1: high prices. If suddenly people are paying absurdly high prices

755
00:41:32,600 --> 00:41:35,239
Speaker 1: for tin cans, other people are going to build their

756
00:41:35,239 --> 00:41:38,560
Speaker 1: own tin can factories and start competing to sell tin cans.

757
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:39,520
Speaker 1: And they did.

758
00:41:39,680 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 2: It was a little bit of a tin rush people

759
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:44,320
Speaker 2: getting into the business. And one of the Dream Team

760
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:48,160
Speaker 2: members was about to defect. Edwin Norton, the guy who

761
00:41:48,239 --> 00:41:52,000
Speaker 2: actually knew something, was unhappy. I imagine it was because

762
00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:55,040
Speaker 2: he actually knew how to can food, and the rest

763
00:41:55,040 --> 00:41:58,400
Speaker 2: of them are just guys in top hats, smoking cigars.

764
00:41:58,000 --> 00:41:58,879
Speaker 1: And telling him what to do.

765
00:41:59,680 --> 00:42:02,440
Speaker 2: He had signed a contract that said he could never

766
00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:05,760
Speaker 2: compete with the American Can Company, obviously, but he spotted

767
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:10,240
Speaker 2: a loophole. Contracts said nothing about family members. Edward Norton

768
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:15,600
Speaker 2: organized with his son, wait for it, the Continental Can

769
00:42:15,680 --> 00:42:19,920
Speaker 2: Company shiny new factory in Syracuse, and in fact, the

770
00:42:19,960 --> 00:42:22,560
Speaker 2: technology was better than the old American Can factories that

771
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:22,840
Speaker 2: they had.

772
00:42:22,960 --> 00:42:24,839
Speaker 1: Could have gone with Cantinental keep going.

773
00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:28,840
Speaker 2: By nineteen oh five, it was American Can versus Continental Can,

774
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:34,880
Speaker 2: the trust versus the rebel. The American Can boys were furious,

775
00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:36,920
Speaker 2: and for the next half century this would be one

776
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:42,560
Speaker 2: of those epic industrial rivalries. It was so fierce that

777
00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:48,640
Speaker 2: Fortune magazine said their relationship was tart tart tart in

778
00:42:48,719 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 2: Fortune Magazine. That's like fist cluably that's good for consumers.

779
00:42:53,520 --> 00:42:55,800
Speaker 2: I mean, two doesn't seem like enough to me.

780
00:42:56,200 --> 00:42:58,560
Speaker 1: Two. I feel like you could still Doopoly's sort of

781
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 1: tacit price fixing. Or maybe explicit price fixing. I don't know.

782
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:04,440
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that it's only two. I guess is it

783
00:43:04,480 --> 00:43:06,799
Speaker 1: because there's an economy of scale and so it's hard

784
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:07,840
Speaker 1: to enter and compete.

785
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:09,799
Speaker 2: It's a duopoly. There's two big ones, but there's lots

786
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:12,439
Speaker 2: of little ones. Yeah, and in fact, ten years later,

787
00:43:12,760 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 2: the US government slow as they are like, huh can monopoly.

788
00:43:18,360 --> 00:43:19,760
Speaker 1: There's one thing we've learned enough the show.

789
00:43:20,040 --> 00:43:22,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, if there's one thing we've learned to this show,

790
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:26,279
Speaker 2: it's that the government is so slow to respond to

791
00:43:26,360 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 2: the what's going on in competition? Right, it takes them

792
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:31,600
Speaker 2: ten years to get all their briefs together. So this

793
00:43:31,640 --> 00:43:34,279
Speaker 2: goes before a judge and it's against American Can.

794
00:43:34,360 --> 00:43:35,719
Speaker 1: Has nothing to do with the Continental Can.

795
00:43:36,000 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 2: Clearly American Can acted like the mafia. They intentionally tried

796
00:43:39,680 --> 00:43:42,880
Speaker 2: to dominate the industry, screw the little guy. But the

797
00:43:42,960 --> 00:43:46,480
Speaker 2: judge determines then really pull it off. He said that

798
00:43:46,560 --> 00:43:49,440
Speaker 2: the current state of competition with the new entrants and

799
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:52,120
Speaker 2: the Continental Can, he said it was like basically fine.

800
00:43:52,640 --> 00:43:54,560
Speaker 2: He decides not to take a hammer and chisel to

801
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:55,040
Speaker 2: the company.

802
00:43:55,800 --> 00:43:56,279
Speaker 1: Well done.

803
00:43:56,560 --> 00:43:59,600
Speaker 2: He wrote that he was reluctant to destroy so finally

804
00:43:59,640 --> 00:44:01,520
Speaker 2: adjusted an industrial machine.

805
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:07,719
Speaker 1: I'm fine. Anythink they practiced. I don't know. There was

806
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:10,240
Speaker 1: a dude named the Judge who started the company.

807
00:44:10,239 --> 00:44:14,960
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, well, it is good for beer drinkers

808
00:44:14,960 --> 00:44:17,919
Speaker 2: everywhere that the Judge did not break up American Can

809
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 2: because they were about to make the last big breakthrough

810
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:22,600
Speaker 2: of our can saga.

811
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:23,520
Speaker 1: Beer.

812
00:44:24,360 --> 00:44:26,200
Speaker 2: It is the holy grail of canning.

813
00:44:26,640 --> 00:44:28,200
Speaker 1: At this point. It's served in bottles.

814
00:44:28,360 --> 00:44:30,640
Speaker 2: No one's figured out how to make it work in cans,

815
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:33,280
Speaker 2: and they want to figure it out because beer people

816
00:44:33,320 --> 00:44:37,439
Speaker 2: think that beer is better if it isn't exposed to light,

817
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:40,920
Speaker 2: I guess, and cans block the light. It keeps on

818
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:41,839
Speaker 2: oxygen better.

819
00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:45,440
Speaker 1: Presumably the fact that it's harder to break a can matters.

820
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:48,359
Speaker 1: Countries getting bigger, you're transporting beer more.

821
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:52,719
Speaker 2: But the problem is beer because of the way it is,

822
00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:56,080
Speaker 2: tends to react with the metal, which makes the beer

823
00:44:56,120 --> 00:44:58,120
Speaker 2: taste metallic, which people hate, and it.

824
00:44:58,080 --> 00:44:59,080
Speaker 1: Weakens the can.

825
00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:04,760
Speaker 2: And since beer is carbonated and under pressure, it would

826
00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:06,120
Speaker 2: blow the cans apart.

827
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:07,080
Speaker 1: The weaken cans apart.

828
00:45:07,239 --> 00:45:09,680
Speaker 2: It was sort of a yease fueled explosive device. Apparently,

829
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 2: the pressure in a beer can is twice that of

830
00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:15,200
Speaker 2: a cart who knew. American Can started to work on

831
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:17,440
Speaker 2: this in nineteen oh nine. They wouldn't solve it till

832
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:21,680
Speaker 2: after prohibition, were secretly working on it in nineteen thirty five.

833
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:27,239
Speaker 2: The answer was something they called the kig liner. Each

834
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:30,760
Speaker 2: tin distant for beer was lined with a form of plastics.

835
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:32,799
Speaker 2: This is before aluminum, so it's still the tin cans

836
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:36,600
Speaker 2: that we know. But they started out with pine resin

837
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:39,080
Speaker 2: and enamel was the first thing they tried. They ended

838
00:45:39,120 --> 00:45:43,440
Speaker 2: up with something called vinyl light plastic. Vinyl plastic was

839
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:46,920
Speaker 2: eventually used in another famous product with a siding on

840
00:45:46,960 --> 00:45:52,080
Speaker 2: My House that too, but the vinyl record yl. At

841
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:55,879
Speaker 2: one point, I think American Can owned a vinyl manufacturer

842
00:45:55,880 --> 00:45:59,560
Speaker 2: that actually supplied record vinyl. As they became a conglomerate,

843
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:03,480
Speaker 2: American Can needed to test this out and they partnered

844
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:06,759
Speaker 2: with the Krueger Beer Company of Newark, New Jersey to

845
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:10,920
Speaker 2: release the first canned beer. American Can offered to put

846
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:13,560
Speaker 2: in the canning equipment for free and crew would only

847
00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:15,920
Speaker 2: have to pay if it was a success, and the

848
00:46:16,040 --> 00:46:17,719
Speaker 2: very first can of beer it looked just like a

849
00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 2: vegetable can. Steal in tin sold individually. An American can

850
00:46:22,600 --> 00:46:25,080
Speaker 2: was thinking about this because they're already thinking about how

851
00:46:25,080 --> 00:46:27,080
Speaker 2: long it had taken for can openers, and so they

852
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:29,920
Speaker 2: developed a special can opener. You can't just crank the

853
00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:32,200
Speaker 2: top of your beer can and then put your lips

854
00:46:32,320 --> 00:46:35,279
Speaker 2: to the sharp edge of metal. They developed something called

855
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:37,640
Speaker 2: a church key. That's what they call it. I don't

856
00:46:37,680 --> 00:46:42,040
Speaker 2: know why, but it puts a little triangle indentation in

857
00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:42,799
Speaker 2: the top of the can.

858
00:46:43,320 --> 00:46:45,239
Speaker 1: We used to do this for canned orange juice when

859
00:46:45,239 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 1: we were camping when I was a kid. It was

860
00:46:46,560 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 1: like tin can orange juice, and you do it on

861
00:46:48,719 --> 00:46:50,439
Speaker 1: two sides. You do it on one side to drink

862
00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:52,719
Speaker 1: out of it, on the other so that the air

863
00:46:52,800 --> 00:46:54,839
Speaker 1: pressure pushes the orange juice into your mouth.

864
00:46:54,880 --> 00:46:56,640
Speaker 2: I guess they didn't know if any of this was

865
00:46:56,680 --> 00:47:01,799
Speaker 2: going to work, so they sent the first batch to Richmond, Virginia, figuring, Oh,

866
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:03,680
Speaker 2: it's a flop in Richmond, No one's gonna hear about

867
00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:04,439
Speaker 2: it in New York City.

868
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:07,600
Speaker 1: This isn't with credit cards in Fresno. Yeah, first credit card,

869
00:47:07,600 --> 00:47:09,319
Speaker 1: they said to Fresno. I was thinking about this.

870
00:47:09,440 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 2: I don't know if there are still test markets, because

871
00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:14,680
Speaker 2: everyone knows everything happening all the time. But in the

872
00:47:14,760 --> 00:47:17,880
Speaker 2: day you would go to try things out in Peoria

873
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:20,359
Speaker 2: or Columbus, Ohio, whatever it was. It was a place

874
00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:22,799
Speaker 2: where new products would emerge and they would see how

875
00:47:23,239 --> 00:47:24,839
Speaker 2: the regular folk liked it before they.

876
00:47:24,719 --> 00:47:27,440
Speaker 1: Moved it to the big leagues. So what happens.

877
00:47:28,320 --> 00:47:32,359
Speaker 2: People loved it, loved the can, It stayed cold, it's

878
00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:35,560
Speaker 2: easy to stack, and this is key. You didn't have

879
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:36,799
Speaker 2: to pay a deposit on it.

880
00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:40,640
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the old school bottle. This was true in

881
00:47:40,680 --> 00:47:42,479
Speaker 1: Mexico when I was a kid. If you bought beer

882
00:47:42,480 --> 00:47:44,160
Speaker 1: in Mexico when I was a kid, it came in

883
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:47,359
Speaker 1: these really thick bottles, and you paid a deposit that

884
00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:49,920
Speaker 1: was on the order of as much as the beery,

885
00:47:50,239 --> 00:47:52,680
Speaker 1: and you would take the bottles back to that beer

886
00:47:52,719 --> 00:47:55,240
Speaker 1: shop like that was a huge percentage of the price,

887
00:47:55,320 --> 00:47:57,279
Speaker 1: so much that you would always bring them back to

888
00:47:57,320 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 1: that chop to get your deposit.

889
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:02,520
Speaker 2: Now you want beer, you buy the can, get the

890
00:48:02,520 --> 00:48:05,600
Speaker 2: little church key which they sometimes gave away, you drink it,

891
00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 2: and then you just throw the can out the window.

892
00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:12,000
Speaker 2: Perfect problem America. Right, Krueger sales went up. The beer

893
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:14,720
Speaker 2: company went up five hundred and fifty percent one hundred

894
00:48:14,719 --> 00:48:18,080
Speaker 2: and eighty thousand cans a day. Other brewers jump in

895
00:48:18,719 --> 00:48:22,640
Speaker 2: continental can. You'll remember that the tart rival. They jump

896
00:48:22,680 --> 00:48:25,839
Speaker 2: in with another technical innovation that did not survive, a

897
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:29,960
Speaker 2: beer can with a cone on top so that brewers

898
00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:32,840
Speaker 2: could use the same bottle caps. So it's essentially a

899
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:36,880
Speaker 2: metal bottle that you could run through the machines and

900
00:48:36,880 --> 00:48:37,600
Speaker 2: put the caps on.

901
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:40,360
Speaker 1: I wonder why that didn't survive, because that seems easier

902
00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:42,760
Speaker 1: to drink out of than the church Key style.

903
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 2: Probably just more expensive.

904
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:46,840
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and I guess you can't stack them to

905
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:47,680
Speaker 1: your earlier point.

906
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:52,359
Speaker 2: And of course it would be the nineteen sixties, after

907
00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:55,040
Speaker 2: the can had turned aluminum, that they would figure out

908
00:48:55,640 --> 00:48:58,520
Speaker 2: how to put an opener into the can itself.

909
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:02,080
Speaker 1: This was the deadly version, right, the version that I

910
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:06,359
Speaker 1: still remember occasionally seeing when I was a kid, Takata beer.

911
00:49:06,400 --> 00:49:08,759
Speaker 1: I lived in southern California, and Takata beer still had

912
00:49:08,760 --> 00:49:11,799
Speaker 1: that old nineteen sixties style where there's a little ring

913
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:14,279
Speaker 1: and you put your finger thering and you pull it

914
00:49:14,640 --> 00:49:16,359
Speaker 1: and what you get off of the top of the

915
00:49:16,400 --> 00:49:20,680
Speaker 1: can is this razor sharp piece of metal that is

916
00:49:21,160 --> 00:49:24,640
Speaker 1: a weapon, essentially, and that's how you open the can,

917
00:49:24,719 --> 00:49:27,080
Speaker 1: and it seems manifestly a bad idea in the way

918
00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:29,200
Speaker 1: a lot of things from that era do now. Many

919
00:49:29,239 --> 00:49:32,800
Speaker 1: people must have truly hurt themselves on these razor sharp

920
00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:34,880
Speaker 1: things that came off the top of cans.

921
00:49:34,960 --> 00:49:37,560
Speaker 2: I'm a little older than you, and when I was

922
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:42,440
Speaker 2: growing up, the gutters of the city were filled with

923
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:45,439
Speaker 2: these little cantops, these little pieces of metal that you've

924
00:49:45,440 --> 00:49:48,400
Speaker 2: pulled off. I remember my mother warning me when we

925
00:49:48,440 --> 00:49:50,879
Speaker 2: went to the beach, because obviously people woul drink beer

926
00:49:50,880 --> 00:49:53,880
Speaker 2: at the beach, they would toss these little pieces of

927
00:49:53,880 --> 00:49:56,040
Speaker 2: metal and you would step on them in the beach

928
00:49:56,320 --> 00:49:58,759
Speaker 2: famous Jimmy Buffett song stepped on.

929
00:49:58,760 --> 00:49:59,359
Speaker 1: A pop top.

930
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:03,880
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, yeah, yeah yeah. This was like a

931
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:07,959
Speaker 2: danger of the time. It gets worse because you knew

932
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:10,440
Speaker 2: this was happening. You didn't want to litter, So you

933
00:50:10,480 --> 00:50:12,520
Speaker 2: pull off this little piece of metal, and what would

934
00:50:12,520 --> 00:50:14,440
Speaker 2: a lot of people do with it? They'd put it

935
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:20,640
Speaker 2: inside the can and then carefully drink around it. There was,

936
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:25,280
Speaker 2: I swear to God, all these news stories about people

937
00:50:25,320 --> 00:50:29,120
Speaker 2: and kids accidentally drinking the polltop. In fact, there was

938
00:50:29,160 --> 00:50:33,920
Speaker 2: an article in Pediatric emergency Care called Swallowed can tab?

939
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:36,279
Speaker 2: Is it still stuck in the esophagus?

940
00:50:36,719 --> 00:50:39,520
Speaker 1: I hope not? Or do you hope?

941
00:50:39,520 --> 00:50:39,920
Speaker 2: So? No?

942
00:50:40,000 --> 00:50:41,440
Speaker 1: You hope not? Right? What do you want to have?

943
00:50:41,600 --> 00:50:41,920
Speaker 1: You to know?

944
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:44,880
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy four a doctor who swallowed one began

945
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:48,000
Speaker 2: a crusade against them. And this is actually how we

946
00:50:48,040 --> 00:50:49,800
Speaker 2: get the tab that we have today.

947
00:50:49,960 --> 00:50:51,840
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing we have now is genius and

948
00:50:51,880 --> 00:50:54,719
Speaker 1: I actually don't know how we got it. Are you

949
00:50:54,719 --> 00:50:55,839
Speaker 1: about to tell me? I am.

950
00:50:56,120 --> 00:50:59,160
Speaker 2: The solution came from an engineer at Reynold's Metal, so

951
00:50:59,160 --> 00:51:01,960
Speaker 2: they'd been working on this for a while. Danielle Kudzick.

952
00:51:02,360 --> 00:51:03,920
Speaker 2: He says it came to him one night when he

953
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:04,799
Speaker 2: was watching.

954
00:51:04,520 --> 00:51:08,360
Speaker 1: TV and he had just swallowed a poll tab. I

955
00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:10,600
Speaker 1: have an idea. Why don't you?

956
00:51:10,640 --> 00:51:12,239
Speaker 2: Read from his patent application?

957
00:51:13,239 --> 00:51:17,160
Speaker 1: The opening construction of the invention requires a tab which

958
00:51:17,280 --> 00:51:21,399
Speaker 1: must be stiff against transverse bending, and yet flexible enough

959
00:51:21,440 --> 00:51:24,600
Speaker 1: and tough enough at the connection between the tab and

960
00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:29,480
Speaker 1: wall to permit lifting and retracting the tab without causing

961
00:51:29,520 --> 00:51:33,840
Speaker 1: a fatigue crack at the connection. This is not easy.

962
00:51:34,160 --> 00:51:36,200
Speaker 2: I have thought about this a lot. It's called the

963
00:51:36,239 --> 00:51:39,839
Speaker 2: stay tab, and I've been watching slow motion videos of

964
00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:40,320
Speaker 2: the opening.

965
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:41,920
Speaker 1: They're all over YouTube. You should really watch it.

966
00:51:42,000 --> 00:51:45,000
Speaker 2: This is an amazing piece of engineering and it actually

967
00:51:45,080 --> 00:51:52,239
Speaker 2: works in two steps. Okay, so the first step is

968
00:51:52,920 --> 00:51:55,120
Speaker 2: it opens. It acts as a sort of like what

969
00:51:55,160 --> 00:51:58,160
Speaker 2: they call like a lever, like a wheelbarrow, where the

970
00:51:58,160 --> 00:52:00,600
Speaker 2: full crum's at the end, and so it opens a

971
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:05,560
Speaker 2: tiny little hole in the top and it releases the pressure.

972
00:52:06,239 --> 00:52:09,719
Speaker 2: Now at that point, the way this is designed, now

973
00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:12,000
Speaker 2: it's a lever with the full crumb at the little rivet.

974
00:52:12,520 --> 00:52:15,080
Speaker 2: So now that it's like opened a little bit, it

975
00:52:15,080 --> 00:52:18,000
Speaker 2: acts in a different way to open the top in

976
00:52:18,000 --> 00:52:19,160
Speaker 2: a sort of circular way.

977
00:52:20,200 --> 00:52:24,600
Speaker 1: It's so clever. I want to take a moment to

978
00:52:24,760 --> 00:52:28,239
Speaker 1: appreciate how much cleverness there is in the world. We

979
00:52:28,280 --> 00:52:31,680
Speaker 1: are surrounded by cleverness like this that in most cases

980
00:52:31,800 --> 00:52:34,360
Speaker 1: is opaque to us. In this case, it's right in

981
00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:36,080
Speaker 1: front of me. It has been my whole life, and

982
00:52:36,120 --> 00:52:38,520
Speaker 1: I sort of got that it was clever, but until

983
00:52:38,560 --> 00:52:41,880
Speaker 1: you just explained it to me, I never understood how

984
00:52:42,360 --> 00:52:43,560
Speaker 1: subtle and clever it is.

985
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:46,920
Speaker 2: It's even better than that, because it's all parts of

986
00:52:46,960 --> 00:52:50,640
Speaker 2: the can went through this process. The aluminium in a

987
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:53,920
Speaker 2: beer can is so thin that it would easily collapse

988
00:52:54,440 --> 00:52:57,040
Speaker 2: except for the pressure that it's under. So the pressure

989
00:52:57,080 --> 00:52:59,640
Speaker 2: is the thing that is making a can incredibly strong.

990
00:52:59,680 --> 00:53:01,680
Speaker 2: You could stand on it and then when you drink it,

991
00:53:01,960 --> 00:53:04,799
Speaker 2: you can crush it. Amazing. Or if you take the

992
00:53:04,840 --> 00:53:08,680
Speaker 2: cans with the vegetables, where's my other can here? Oh,

993
00:53:09,040 --> 00:53:11,000
Speaker 2: they put the ridges on the can. They put the

994
00:53:11,080 --> 00:53:13,520
Speaker 2: ridges on the can so that it doesn't collapse, but

995
00:53:13,560 --> 00:53:16,000
Speaker 2: also so that if the contents expand a little bit

996
00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:18,520
Speaker 2: under heat, there's a little bit of give in the can.

997
00:53:19,560 --> 00:53:20,200
Speaker 1: Incredible.

998
00:53:20,920 --> 00:53:24,040
Speaker 2: I never knew the age of the industrial can company

999
00:53:24,080 --> 00:53:27,359
Speaker 2: peaked in the nineteen fifties and the nineteen sixties. Weirdly enough,

1000
00:53:27,360 --> 00:53:30,600
Speaker 2: when Andy Warhol decides to paint those Campbell soup cans

1001
00:53:30,680 --> 00:53:34,719
Speaker 2: like as the emblem of modern culture, Sure, all these

1002
00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:35,880
Speaker 2: other things will get invented.

1003
00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:36,160
Speaker 1: Right.

1004
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:40,560
Speaker 2: You obviously had refrigeration, frozen food, TV dinners, you had cartons,

1005
00:53:40,719 --> 00:53:43,799
Speaker 2: reseealable pouches like you just didn't need to eat meat

1006
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:48,200
Speaker 2: from a can anymore. And you know it's interesting the can,

1007
00:53:48,280 --> 00:53:52,640
Speaker 2: as this business history arc, it starts out as such

1008
00:53:52,640 --> 00:53:56,920
Speaker 2: an amazing insight, right, an amazing invention that wins a

1009
00:53:56,960 --> 00:54:00,520
Speaker 2: prize it's incredibly profitable. At first, it brings in competitors,

1010
00:54:00,520 --> 00:54:03,280
Speaker 2: it gets cheaper and cheaper, and then it just becomes

1011
00:54:03,280 --> 00:54:06,000
Speaker 2: a commodity. No one ever thinks about it. A can

1012
00:54:06,360 --> 00:54:10,279
Speaker 2: like sure, like a half trillion cans are produced every year.

1013
00:54:10,360 --> 00:54:14,040
Speaker 2: Half trillion, right, beverage cans, but also the vegetable cans, right,

1014
00:54:14,239 --> 00:54:18,360
Speaker 2: half a trilli five hundred billion, Yes, mostly beverage in

1015
00:54:18,400 --> 00:54:23,800
Speaker 2: a billion a day. Incredible, ye, incredible, tiny little margins

1016
00:54:23,800 --> 00:54:25,880
Speaker 2: on each one. Somebody's making some money. But this is

1017
00:54:25,960 --> 00:54:28,319
Speaker 2: not the business that you know, you want to be

1018
00:54:28,320 --> 00:54:30,600
Speaker 2: in or have your kids be in. It's just a

1019
00:54:30,680 --> 00:54:34,160
Speaker 2: normal commodity business that's out there, and the consumer just

1020
00:54:34,280 --> 00:54:36,759
Speaker 2: never thinks about it. You look at the label, what

1021
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:39,239
Speaker 2: you want to eat? You open it up or the

1022
00:54:39,239 --> 00:54:41,960
Speaker 2: stuff out, throw the can away. The can is invisible.

1023
00:54:42,080 --> 00:54:46,520
Speaker 2: The can is invisible. The great can companies, the American Can,

1024
00:54:46,600 --> 00:54:50,640
Speaker 2: Continental Can, they don't exist anymore, or not in their

1025
00:54:50,920 --> 00:54:54,560
Speaker 2: their former glory. In nineteen eighty seven, what was left

1026
00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:58,640
Speaker 2: of Continental Can became part of the United States Can Company,

1027
00:54:58,680 --> 00:55:04,160
Speaker 2: a subsidiary of Inter American Packaging. Okay, American Can had

1028
00:55:04,160 --> 00:55:08,000
Speaker 2: an even sadder end in the nineteen eighties, Norman Pel's

1029
00:55:08,239 --> 00:55:11,160
Speaker 2: hedge fun guy. He starts rolling up packaging companies. He

1030
00:55:11,200 --> 00:55:16,040
Speaker 2: buys a American Cans factory operations and National Can another competitor,

1031
00:55:16,920 --> 00:55:21,920
Speaker 2: and that leaves American Can with no cans. America Can

1032
00:55:22,120 --> 00:55:24,640
Speaker 2: still exists as a sort of conglomerate. They have these

1033
00:55:24,680 --> 00:55:27,600
Speaker 2: other businesses they went into in the vinyl and all

1034
00:55:27,640 --> 00:55:29,160
Speaker 2: of this, but they don't have any cans. They have

1035
00:55:29,160 --> 00:55:33,840
Speaker 2: no can factories. They renamed themselves America Can't. Oh that's good,

1036
00:55:33,960 --> 00:55:34,480
Speaker 2: that's great.

1037
00:55:34,840 --> 00:55:38,800
Speaker 1: Uh. No, Primerica so different. America Primerica is the perfect

1038
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:41,160
Speaker 1: late twentieth century company. What do they even do? What

1039
00:55:41,280 --> 00:55:43,560
Speaker 1: is Primerica Financial Services?

1040
00:55:43,800 --> 00:55:48,799
Speaker 2: Yes, USA, they bought Smith Barney, they became a part

1041
00:55:48,920 --> 00:55:51,960
Speaker 2: of City Group. It is perfect, from the candy stores

1042
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:55,600
Speaker 2: of France to being part of a giant financial company.

1043
00:55:56,320 --> 00:55:58,960
Speaker 2: I still have this dream that like in the vault

1044
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:01,080
Speaker 2: of the City Group building here in Manhattan, maybe in

1045
00:56:01,160 --> 00:56:04,359
Speaker 2: the basement, there's a vault and some banker goes down

1046
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:08,440
Speaker 2: there looking for old mortgage documents or something, and sorting

1047
00:56:08,480 --> 00:56:11,000
Speaker 2: through the piles of documents. You know, there's stacks of

1048
00:56:11,040 --> 00:56:15,239
Speaker 2: money in the corner, and there underneath the documents is

1049
00:56:15,239 --> 00:56:21,880
Speaker 2: a single rusted can. It's veal, veal and gravy, and

1050
00:56:21,920 --> 00:56:22,879
Speaker 2: it still tastes great.

1051
00:56:23,680 --> 00:56:26,359
Speaker 1: Please email us or leave a comment below. You can

1052
00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:27,760
Speaker 1: tell us what you want to hear on the show.

1053
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:30,399
Speaker 1: You can also tell us what is the oldest can

1054
00:56:30,440 --> 00:56:33,080
Speaker 1: of food you have in your house? Let me ask you,

1055
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:34,799
Speaker 1: Robert Smith, what's the oldest can of food you have

1056
00:56:34,840 --> 00:56:35,239
Speaker 1: in your house?

1057
00:56:35,280 --> 00:56:37,920
Speaker 2: I've been thinking about this. The oldest can is from

1058
00:56:37,960 --> 00:56:41,520
Speaker 2: about fifteen years ago. It is a canned ham, and

1059
00:56:41,560 --> 00:56:43,520
Speaker 2: there's no way I'm ever going to eat it unless

1060
00:56:43,520 --> 00:56:46,640
Speaker 2: things get really bad, because like old ham is better

1061
00:56:46,719 --> 00:56:47,560
Speaker 2: than no ham at all.

1062
00:56:48,080 --> 00:56:50,799
Speaker 1: I also have something fifteen years old. It's from when

1063
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:54,680
Speaker 1: my first daughter was born and she's fifteen. It's a

1064
00:56:54,719 --> 00:56:58,120
Speaker 1: can of freeze dried milk, which I'm not sure if

1065
00:56:58,120 --> 00:56:59,000
Speaker 1: it's still good.

1066
00:56:59,400 --> 00:57:02,520
Speaker 2: Was it the financial crisis that Panick does? So write

1067
00:57:02,600 --> 00:57:04,839
Speaker 2: us with your oldest can, send us a picture if

1068
00:57:04,880 --> 00:57:08,399
Speaker 2: you like. We are Business History at Pushkin dot fm, or.

1069
00:57:08,360 --> 00:57:10,440
Speaker 1: Leave your answer in the comments. If you're watching on YouTube,

1070
00:57:10,520 --> 00:57:15,120
Speaker 1: our show today is edited by our showrunner Ryan dilley Man,

1071
00:57:15,120 --> 00:57:17,360
Speaker 1: who loves a canna baked beans. Do you love a

1072
00:57:17,440 --> 00:57:19,920
Speaker 1: can of bake beans, he gets generic beans. Our engineer

1073
00:57:19,960 --> 00:57:23,800
Speaker 1: is Sarah Bruguer and our producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang.

1074
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:26,640
Speaker 1: And I am Jacob Goldstein. I'm Robert Smith. He is

1075
00:57:26,640 --> 00:57:29,080
Speaker 1: a business history show, but the history of business. Thanks

1076
00:57:29,120 --> 00:57:29,600
Speaker 1: for listening.