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The following essay, “‘Crazy Uncle Gail’s’ Idea and What Came of It,” by Eliza Archard Conner, appeared in the June 10, 1893 Northern Star of Lismore, New South Wales, Australia. It was transcribed by Hudson River Maritime Museum volunteer George A. Thompson and annotated by John Warren.
About forty years ago Gail Borden, a civil engineer of New England ancestry, conceived the idea that milk could be boiled down in a vacuum till from the liquid condition it became substantially solid, and in that state, preserved by means of another Yankee invention — the sealed tin can — it could be kept for any length of time.
