Science: Cryovac

In 1937 a French scientist named Maurice Piettre, when he arrived in the U. S. for a conference on food processing, told of new wrapping material then being tried in France for refrigerated meats. The material was latex—pure natural rubber altered just enough to be workable. The trick sounded good to Dewey and Almy Chemical Co. of Cambridge, Mass., which was already using latex to make low-cost balloons ($2.25) for high-altitude meteorological and cosmic ray observation. The company's researchers set to work devising a commercial method for wrapping poultry and meat in latex.

To wrap a chicken they now stretch a latex...

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