Yes we can
‘From the Timeline’ is a series that looks at specific people and moments from MIT’s 150-year history and explains their lasting effect on the Institute, the nation and the world. In the late 18th century, French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte offered a cash reward to anyone who could develop a reliable method to preserve food — and keep Napoleon’s armies fed. Fifteen years later, French confectioner Nicholas Appert won the prize with his method of heating food and sealing it in an airtight container.For nearly 50 years, no one was sure why this technique worked, until Louis Pasteur demonstrated that food spoilage is caused by microorganisms such as bacteria, which are killed by heat. By the late 1800s, many companies were selling canned goods, but the canning process was far from perfect. In 1895, William Lyman Underwood, grandson of the founder of the William Underwood Company of Boston, America’s first...