Re: [ARSCLIST] (sort of ^ ) What is a Milk Box ? (was Moving Sound Recording Collections)

["Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Lennick" <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >> Is it a box used to store milk bottles (?). And how big are them?
Of course, our audience will now be asking themseleves, Wikipedia, or
unknown digital/other contacts...

"What are, or were, "milk bottles?!"

Herein lies a history...

Prior to the previous "turn of a century" or so, milk was usually
delivered in the containers in which it had been collected (or the
cow was led from door to door)! Keeping things cold was difficult
(thus the "Lake Simcoe Ice Company," which sawed blocks of its
product from the winter's coverage...).

However, it quickly became apparent that milk could not only turn
sour (which then led to cheese factories)...but could also harbour
deadly diseases (which then led to "Pastuerization...!). Once the
germs in milk had been sent to see Jesus, there had to be a clean
and easily sanitized container therefor. Since one of the "boom
insustries" of the new industrial age was glass containers and
closures therefor...which could be washed in near-boiling water
and thus sanitized...milk began to be sold, and delivered to one's
door, in "milk bottles!" In fact, many early 20th-century houses
had small compartments next to their back doors, into which "the
milkman" could place the morning order, and from which the house-
holder could retrieve, using an inside door, the same...!

In the early forties, a waxed-cardboard container was introduced for
the distribution of milk. Then, in the mid-to-late seventies, it became
possible to package milk in a set of three plastic bags, contained in
a single larger bag (there was a momentary delay while it was established
that milk in transparent plastic containers, kept under exposure to
fluourescent lighting, developed an "off taste!")!

Since then, milk (AFAIK) has only been availble in waxed-cardboard
containers or plastic bags. There MAY, somewhere in Radio-Land, still
exist an intentionally-anachronistic dairy operation which purveys
milk in glass bottles...however, if so, I wot not thereof!

Steven C. Barr