Before the 1900s, tin was commonly used to package household foods. Since it protected the foods inside, and it could be bent with ease, it was regarded as an inexpensive, easy and health conscious way to keep foods fresh. Some of its disadvantages, which lead to its defeat to aluminum, included the fact that it could only be rolled thicker than aluminum; it became brittle when warm, reducing its malleability greatly, and the tin foil created a strange aftertaste, which was undesirable to many.
During the beginning of the 1800s, scientists and companies began to experiment with aluminum foil. Reynolds Wrap, started by Richard Reynolds, became the first company to use aluminum foil instead of tin. His reasons were simple and logical: aluminum rolled thinner than tin, increasing the amount of foil the company could produce on the same amount of money, while also reducing the amount of time the machines had to keep working, which helped reduce pollution into the atmosphere. Since......
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Approximate Pages: 3 (260 words per double-spaced page) |