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
Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition large factors in the deaths of these men. Near the gravesite, Beattie had discovered a pile of tin cans, which was the storage for food on the Franklin expedition. Through forensic testing, the lead soldering found on the cans matched the lead found in the bodies, determining that lead from the cans had contaminated the food supply and caused the deaths of many in the Franklin expedition. There is a portion of the book in which Beattie and Geiger use the evidence to theoretically reconstruct the final hours of the three Franklin crewmen in a way they believe may have