Canning novelty. Early methods of manufacture employed poisonous lead solder for sealing the cans. Studies in the 1980s attributed the lead from the cans as a factor in the disastrous outcome of the 1845 Franklin expedition to chart and navigate the Northwest Passage. Later studies found this to be false. Increasing mechanization of the canning process, coupled with a huge increase in urban populations across Europe, resulted in a rising demand for canned food. A number of inventions and improvements followed, and by the 1860s smaller machine-made steel cans were possible, and the time to cook food in sealed cans had
Campbell's Soup Cans be visiting Warhol in May 1962, at a time when Warhol was being featured in a May 11, 1962 "Time" magazine article "The Slice-of-Cake School" (that included a portion of Warhol's silkscreened "200 One Dollar Bills"), along with Lichtenstein, Rosenquist, and Wayne Thiebaud. Warhol was the only artist whose photograph actually appeared in the article, which is indicative of his knack for manipulating the mass media. Blum saw dozens of Campbell's Soup can variations, including a grid of "One-Hundred Soup Cans" that day. Blum was shocked that Warhol had no gallery arrangement and offered him a July show at the