Clarence Birdseye was born on December 9, 1886, and died on October 7, 1956. He was an American inventor, entrepreneur, and naturalist who is considered the founder of the modern frozen food industry. He started the frozen food company Birds Eye. One of his inventions during his career was the double belt freezer.
Birdseye was one of nine children. He grew up in New York City and later attended Amherst College. He began his scientific career working for the U.S. government. A biography about his life was published by Doubleday more than 50 years after he died.
Early life and education
Clarence Birdseye was the sixth of nine children born to Clarence Frank Birdseye, a lawyer who worked for an insurance company, and Ada Jane Underwood. He was born in New York, New York, where his family lived in a townhouse in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. From an early age, Birdseye was very interested in natural science and taxidermy, a skill he learned on his own through letters and correspondence. At age eleven, he advertised science lessons he taught. When he was fourteen, his family moved to Montclair, New Jersey, where he graduated from Montclair High School. He enrolled at Amherst College, where his father and older brother had also studied. At college, he excelled in science but had average grades in other subjects. His love for collecting insects earned him the nickname "Bugs" from his classmates.
During the summer after his first year of college, Birdseye worked for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in New Mexico and Arizona as an "assistant naturalist." At that time, the USDA focused on helping farmers and ranchers deal with predators, especially coyotes.
In 1908, financial difficulties forced Birdseye to leave college after his second year. In 1917, his father and older brother, Kellogg, were sent to prison for cheating their employer. It is not clear if this event was connected to Birdseye leaving Amherst College.
Birdseye later returned to work for the USDA, this time on a project to study animals in the American West. He also worked with entomologist Willard Van Orsdel King in Montana. Between 1910 and 1911, Birdseye helped King capture hundreds of small mammals, from which thousands of ticks were removed for research. This work led to the discovery that ticks caused Rocky Mountain spotted fever, an important scientific breakthrough. Birdseye’s next assignment, from 1912 to 1915, took him to Labrador in the Dominion of Newfoundland (now part of Canada). There, he became more interested in preserving food through freezing, especially fast freezing. He bought land at Muddy Bay and built a ranch to raise foxes. He learned from the Inuit people how to ice fish under thick ice. In -40°C weather, the Inuit showed him that freshly caught fish could be instantly flash-frozen when exposed to air. When thawed, the fish still tasted fresh. Birdseye saw the value of this traditional knowledge, as frozen seafood sold in New York was of lower quality than the frozen fish he saw in Labrador. This experience in Canada directly inspired his method of preserving food.
When food is frozen slowly, near the freezing point, ice crystals form inside the cells of animals or vegetables. When the food thaws, liquid leaks from damaged cells, making the food mushy or dry. Rapid freezing, at much lower temperatures, gives ice crystals less time to form, causing less damage.
In 1922, Birdseye tested fish-freezing methods at the Clothel Refrigerating Company. He then started his own company, Birdseye Seafoods Inc., to freeze fish fillets using chilled air at -43°C (-45°F). In 1924, his company failed due to low consumer interest in the product. That same year, he developed a new, commercially practical method for quick-freezing: packing fish in cartons and freezing them between two refrigerated surfaces under pressure. He created General Seafood Corporation to promote this process.
Industrial development
In 1925, General Seafood Corporation moved to Gloucester, Massachusetts. There, it marketed and sold Birdseye's newest invention, the double belt freezer. This machine used cold brine to chill two stainless steel belts that carried packaged fish, freezing the fish quickly. His invention was granted US Patent #1,773,079, seen by some as the start of flash freezing and the commercial frozen fresh foods market. Birdseye also patented other machines that cooled food even faster. In 1927, he patented the multiplate freezing machine, which became the foundation for freezing food for many decades.
In 1929, Birdseye sold his company and patents to Goldman Sachs and the Postum Company. This company later became General Foods Corporation after its owner, Marjorie Merriweather Post, offered Birdseye $22 million (about $335 million in 2021 dollars) and a vice president position after visiting the facilities. She discovered Birdseye’s innovation when she ate a frozen whole fresh turkey on her yacht. General Foods created the Birds Eye Frozen Food Company. Post helped expand the frozen fresh food market by providing commercial freezers to wholesalers and retailers. Birdseye continued to grow the company and improve his frozen food technology.
In 1930, the company tested consumer interest in quick-frozen foods by selling products in 18 retail stores in Springfield, Massachusetts. The first product line included 26 items, such as 18 cuts of frozen meat, spinach, peas, fruits, berries, blue point oysters, and fish fillets. Customers liked the new products, and this event is now seen as the beginning of retail frozen foods. The "Birds Eye" name remains a major frozen-food brand. In 1949, Birdseye received the Institute of Food Technologists’ Babcock-Hart Award. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005.
Death
Birdseye passed away on October 7, 1956, due to a heart attack at the Gramercy Park Hotel when he was 69 years old. He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the sea near Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Legacy
In 2012, a long book about Birdseye, titled Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man, was written by Mark Kurlansky and published by Doubleday.