JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2752

“It is pleasant to think that our jolly tars are no sufferers by this expeditious mode of making their sea bread. It seems to be admitted that the machine made biscuits are better mixed and better kneaded than those made by hand. The three bakeries at the three arsenals before named could produce when at full work six or eight thousand tons of biscuits in a year which would effect a saving of ten or twelve thousand a year as compared with the old method.”

This is the paragraph that ends the long selection, below, taken from The Pictorial and Literary Sketch Book of the British Empire, (volume 1, published by Charles Knight, London, 1849). It is a great and lovely ending and also a fine beginning to describing a curious and engaging article, “Biscuit Baking Machinery”, in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, 1833. Overall, this is a chapter in the history of machine-over-human, of “Mechanization Takes Command” (with reference to Giedion’s superb and occasionally gut-wrenching book), and takes place in regards to sea biscuits, Jolly Tars, and a beautifully named Royal Clarence Victualling Establishment (“at Weevil, near Portsmouth”)

It all boils out to biscuits. And in this case a Mr. T.T. Grant received a 2000-pound grant to develop his machine. The article goes into some great detail on it, though I found this curious before-and-after article (quoted below) that describes the biscuits made by hand and those by machine. One thing was certain: the machinery saved time in labor and also seems to have cut cost by 75%.  In any event, I wanted to share these two episodes in the early stages of the introduction of machines in the mass production of food.