Ep. 31 Mason Jars

This week I look at mason jars and find out who they're named after and who actually made the money. Come along for the ride this week as I ask, mason jars, how did that happen? The idea of “heat-based canning” emerged in 1806 and was popularized by Nicholas Appert, a French cook who had been inspired by the need to preserve foods for long periods during the Napoleonic wars.  Appert originally used champagne bottles, which he secured with the improbable mixture of cheese and lime. He soon exchanged champagne bottles for glasses with wider necks, and by 1803 his canned goods were being successfully distributed to the French Navy. Up until the early 1800’s most vegetables were only available seasonally because there was no refrigeration at the time.  This is what lead to the popularization of canning. Mason Jars changed the way American families cooked. Before canning, families had to live off things like smoked meats and heavily salted meats.  Before mason jars most jars had a flat unthreaded top, across the top a tin lid would be placed and sealed with wax.  The wax did not always work. If it wasn’t properly applied then air could get in and you basically just have a jar of slowly rotting vegetables. This sounds like a very olden times thing to do. These guys used to seal their letters with wax and now we know they did the same with jars. Mason Jars were created by a man named John Landis Mason in 1858. Mason was a Philadelphia tinsmith which is a person who makes and fixes things made of tin and other light metals. Mason is also credited with making the first screw-off salt shaker top in the same year.  Landis was only 26 when he patented the design and the design for the top came first. The jar was designed around the lid. Mason added threads to a lid that went over the jar itself. Making for a tighter seal than anything else on the market. These jars were also important because it marked the first time that bleached glass was used. We talked about this a little bit during the bottled water episode because they used to bottle their water in green colored glass. It was a big deal for people to be able to look into the jar and see whats in there. We take it for granted now, but it was a hot commodity in the mid 1800’s He filed a patent for his invention and when it was granted Mason would print his jars with the patent date. He’s not vain or anything. The earliest mason jars were made from transparent aqua glass, and are often referred to by collectors as “Crowleytown Jars,” as many believe they were first produced in the New Jersey village of Crowleytown. There are different collector’s mason jars that sell for thousands of dollars. One in particular is called the upside down jar because it was made to rest on its lid. Like the ketchup and mayo bottles of today. Mason tried to regain control of his invention, but after various court cases and failed business partnerships he was edged out.Mason would die in poverty in a tenement house in 1902 He would license his design to some companies but most other companies just took it for free and made their own knock offs. One of the companies that actually licensed the tech was the Ball jar company. Enter the Ball brothers. In 1880, the year after Mason’s original patent expired, the five brothers—Edmund, Frank, George, Lucius and William—bought the small Wooden Jacket Can Company of Buffalo, New York, with a $200 loan from their uncle.  The company produced wood-jacketed tin containers for storing things like kerosene, but the Ball brothers soon moved on to tin cans and glass jars. After changing their name to the Ball Brothers Manufacturing Company, they set up shop in Muncie, Indiana, where natural gas fields provided plentiful fuel for glassblowing.  Soon they were the largest producer of mason jars in America. Their early jars still bore the words “Mason’s Patent 1858.” These days,