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The Interesting History Of Packaging

Before a time where food was packaged into bright colourful designs and people thought the packaging said more about a product than the product itself, people just consumed food as and where it was. Groups of people were able to provide for themselves, catching and collecting their own food to eat and not wasting any part. When things needed to be contained, nature provided logs, shells, grasses and animal parts to fit this role. Packaging machinery was a long way off from being needed.

Paper is probably one of the oldest forms of packaging material known through history. Sheets of treated mulberry bark were used very early on by the Chinese to wrap food up. Paper-making techniques improved through the years and were eventually refined within the Middle East, through to Europe and eventually the UK in 1310. It only then reached America in Pennsylvania in 1690, a long way behind from the rest of the world.

Yet this form of paper was not originally created from the pulp of trees but was made from flax fibres and eventually linen rags before wood was considered. It was only in 1867 that wood pulp was considered to be the best way to produce paper. England produced their first cardboard box commercially in 1817, a mere 200 years behind China. This invention began to replace wooden boxes and crates used predominately for trade.

The development of a carton was discovered by accident during the 1870's and soon produced the concept of flexible packaging, which influenced the production of packaging. Paper and cardboard production ended up being incredibly popular into the 20th Century. It has only been recently that the considerations of its impact on the environment have been considered and other forms of packaging have been more widely used.

Plastic is the youngest and most used form of packaging now and although having been discovered for a while its use was mainly saved for war time and military use. Styrene was first created by from the balsam tree in 1831 but early products made out of it were easily broken. Germany ended up improving this in the thirties and by the 1950's the foam was readily available.

Vinyl chloride provided further experimentation with plastics and packaging, and packaging machinery still today creates some products such as water and vegetable oil bottles. These were mainly introduced in the late forties and early fifties.

The American Civil War ended up being responsible for the production of plastic, celluloid was invented to replace ivory. American manufactures ended up offering a reward of 10,000 dollars for anyone who could come up with this idea and it was eventually discovered by John Wesley Hyatt and his brother. Celluloid was able to be carved and changed in shape much like Ivory.

Cellulose acetate was first created out of wood pulp in 1900 and used in photography by 1909. Although it was being produced in New York during the 20's it wasn't used for packaging purposes until the late 1950's. A lot of it was used for the military and the military alone. By the 30's however the film was designed to use around submarine cables in order to protect them from getting wet and ruined.
Finally, cellophanes and transparent films have been more and more refined to be used as outer packaging on many products around the world. Originally they are clear but with the development of packaging machinery they can now be made to be coloured, opaque or covered in pattern designs.

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