Appeared for the first time in Europe during the Napoleonic wars, canned food debuted on shelves in the 19th century and has evolved throughout the decades to become an ubiquitous feature of life. It is worth celebrating its remarkable history in photos.
Late 1800s, women working at Richardson & Robbins Cannery, USA
1909, a canning machine in Baltimore, USA
1920, Discharged Sailors, Soldiers & Airmen’s store
1925, a housewife with her own ‘Home Canner’
1928, canned food made picnicking easier
1930, grocery store
1934, women canning beans in the UK
1936, canning plums
… and peas
1937, fancy a canned beer?
1939, war has started and the British government promotes hermetically-sealed bread
1940, Red Cross Christmas package for British prisoners of war in German camps
1944, the first self-heating can
1955, packers at a fruit factory
1955, canning peanut oil in Cuba
1955, strange food (octopus on skewers, lava worms, fried silkworms)
1956, Unox pork luncheon meat
1960, British chef Fanny Cradock at the First National Delicatessen Exhibition in London
1962, a Harrods hamper
1962, Russian caviar
1963, easy to open cola can, the first aluminum can to be used in soda manufacturing
1981, Hungarian space food for cosmonaut Bertalan Farkas
2005, packers fill sardine cans, US
2006, a canned food menu for the International Space Station
2015, Milacron Holding’s Klear Can, a see-through alternative to metal cans
