The Origins of Quick Freezing

The Frozen Food industry was invented by the Birdseye company. And that company was started by a living breathing Birdseye; Clarence Birdseye.

Clarence Birdseye was a small, bespectacled New Yorker who lived a life somewhere between Buffalo Bill and Thomas Edison.

He came up with the idea for frozen food while starting a family in the barren wastes of North Eastern Canada, where he ate polar bears, skunks, lynx stewed in sherry, and horned owls.

He became a self made millionaire who invented not only the frozen food industry but also new kinds of lightbulbs, automatic whaling harpoons, and a whole new paper making process while living in the Colombian jungle. He died with more than two hundred patents in his name.

Our guest to tell the story of this remarkable inventor is Mark Kurlansky, author of Birdseye a biography of Clarence Birdseye.

Produced and Edited by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.

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