Mrs. Borden

Condensed milk was invented by Gail Borden in 1853.  After one bad invention followed by another, he finally hit on the idea of food concentrates as an economical way to safeguard the food supply.  He once said he conceived the notion by observing his wife adding sugar to her milk to keep her full-figured voluptuousness, a sign of beauty and wealth at the time. (It would solve a lot of problems for me if we could just return to that time as my full-figured look is considered neither a sign of beauty or wealth, simply a sign that I adore cherry pie).  Before, milk was shipped in unsanitary oak barrels, and it spoiled quickly.  Although he didn’t invent the tin can, his marketing skills in effect launched the canned food industry.  Canning food diminished the possibility of food-storage spoilage, subsequent short supplies from the whims of natural elements, contamination by vermin.  He died in Borden, Texas of gastrointestinal flu (possibly from drinking from a dented container) in 1874 and had his body packed in a tin can of a railroad car to be buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in New York.