“Then, in the 1850s, corrugated cardboard: paperboard folded vertically in arches and smooshed between two horizontal planes like a sandwich. The interior curve gives the material a disproportionate strength. And so inside every flap of cardboard is the science of the cathedral, ten thousand vaulted arches distributing compression, allowing pulp to transcend into something lightweight, rigid, and, above all, cheap. It is the stuff of revolutions. Its first use is in giving structure to gentlemen’s hats. Quickly thereafter, it is adopted for shipping boxes, though the first of these requires a clerk to meticulously fold the cardboard around a wooden frame. It is slow and cautious work, item by item, until, in 1890, Robert Gair of Brooklyn begins to manufacture precut, easy-to-fold boxes. The effect on the grocery store cannot be overstated: regular shipments of products suddenly make economic sense. Producer and retailer become connected in a far more consistent manner. Alongside corrugated, a similar revolution occurs on the level of the individual product. The flat-bottomed paper bag matures into its own during the Civil War when cotton is in short supply. A series of advances in canning allows the preservation of food to move from fragile, expensive glass jars to cheap and hardy tin. Card stock, the thinner brethren of corrugated, used for cereal and cracker boxes, is perfected on the industrial scale. Where containers were once handmade and laborious creations, they can now be pumped from conveyor belts: separate, individuated, and eager to take on whatever identity their labels give them. By 1900, the shift is momentous: packaged food is responsible for one-fifth of all manufacturing in the United States. Modern life does not exist without this shift. Directly from the box springs the brand. From the brand the advertiser. From the advertiser, perhaps, ourselves.”
— The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket by Benjamin Lorr
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