The Inquisitive Yankee

"Go around asking a lot of damfool questions and taking chances. Only through curiosity can we discover opportunities, and only by gambling can we take advantage of them." This was the credo of Clarence Birdseye, an inquisitive, bright-eyed Yankee tinkerer. By asking questions and taking chances he revolutionized America's eating habits, made his name a household word, and founded a billion dollar industry.

One of the damfool questions Clarence Birdseye asked himself 40 winters ago when trading furs in the wilds of Labrador: Why did the fish and meats that he quick-froze taste better when thawed out than the same foods slow-frozen? The curious Yankee cut thin slices of the frozen food and found the answer: quick-freezing prevented large ice crystals from forming, thus kept the food cells intact and firm; slower-freezing in milder temperatures created big ice crystals that ruptured the food cells, producing a pulpy, tasteless mass. $7 Investment. Six years later in Gloucester, Mass., curiosity turned to opportunity as Birdseye went into the wholesale fish business. Up to then fish shippers had been turning out a slow-frozen, cold-storage product that looked like fish and often tasted like mush. In vesting $7 in buckets of brine, blocks of ice and an electric fan, Birdseye started to quick-freeze fish. Birdseye's process turned out well; his finances, however, were not equal to the strain of setting up a large manufacturing and distributing organization, and he went broke. Unfazed. he hocked his life insurance and gambled again. This time he won; in 1929 Birdseye. who now had powerful backers, sold his General Seafoods Corp. and 168 quick-freeze patents to the Postum Co. (later renamed General Foods) and the Goldman-Sachs Trading Corp. for $22 million. Said Birdseye proudly: "That was, I believe, the largest sum ever paid for a patent in this country."

Actually, Birdseye did not invent quick-frozen foods. Eskimos had followed the practice for centuries; European scientists had developed the theory to a fine point. Said Birdseye: "My contribution was to take the Eskimos' knowledge and the scientists' theories and adapt them to quantity production." Brick-hard, brick-size frozen food packages became a staple in U.S. kitchens. Many of the housewives who used the product never knew that Birdseye (spelled Birds Eye on General Foods packages) was a man. But, they paid him the greater compliment of using frozen foods so enthusiastically that in 1955 the industry that Clarence Birdseye had pioneered for $7 soared to nearly $2 billion gross, shared by 1,551 companies* packaging some 2,000 brands.

$50,000 Income. Though he was enjoying a $50,000-a-year income by his 40s, the restless Yankee would not retire, kept insisting: "There is always a better way of doing almost anything." He kept finding it. An inveterate fisherman, he contrived a one-man kickless harpoon gun to spear whales; a window-shopper, he invented a one-piece display lamp and reflector for shopkeepers, then founded a successful electric company to produce the unit, though he admittedly did not know the difference between an ohm and a kilowatt. He even found time to write a book on wildflowers.

Just a year ago, Birdseye returned to the U.S. after two years in Peru, with another triumph to his credit: a method of converting sugar cane wastes to paper pulp in twelve minutes v. nine hours for the old process. Though he suffered from heart trouble and had to lead a strictly regulated life for the past 20 years, he said: "Still other ventures are afoot, and the days are not long enough for me to take advantage of all the opportunities I see."

Last week in Manhattan death came to Clarence Birdseye. 69, and ended his restless quest. Behind him he left 300 patents, a characteristically tart self-description: "I do not consider myself a remarkable person. I am just a guy with a very large bump of curiosity and a gambling instinct."

*Among them Buitoni Foods, which last week sent President Giovanni Buitoni back to Italy to set up a frozen-food industry. The 129-year-old, world wide Buitoni organization started freezing lasagne, ravioli, macaroni and cheese in the U.S. in 1950, did so well it decided to market them to Italian housewives, using Italy's ice-cream dealers as outlets.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.