The encyclopedia · R&D & Science · Technical decision · 1918–1930s
Kidd and West kept apples fresh for a year in their own exhaled gas
Cambridge scientists put apples to sleep with carbon dioxide and made the season last all year.
Low Temperature Research Station, Cambridge
the move
In 1918, Franklin Kidd and Cyril West of the Low Temperature Research Station in Cambridge began experiments on storing apples in controlled gas. A 1932 report in New Zealand's Huntly Press described the goal as 'putting apples to sleep' and then letting them 'wake as fresh as the day they were picked'.
The mechanism is the fruit's own breathing. Apples absorb oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide; in a gas-tight store the rising CO2 depresses respiration and slows aging — an effect 1935 reports called an 'anaesthetic'. Apples held a year in the gas stayed in perfect condition, while apples merely cold-stored came out defective, and the method was proposed for fruit shipped at sea.
Kidd and West's work became controlled atmosphere (CA) storage. The first commercial CA store, about 30 tonnes, was built near Canterbury, Kent in 1929, and by 1942 the method reached the United States for McIntosh apples in the Hudson Valley. Today some countries keep more than half their apple and pear crop in CA rooms.
why it works
- The gas slows the fruit's own aging instead of fighting it
- One year of shelf life turned a seasonal crop into a year-round one
- No added chemicals: the fruit produces the atmosphere itself
- It reinforced cold storage rather than replacing it
what transfers
If you can't stop time, slow the organism's clock: work with the fruit's own metabolism instead of freezing or canning against it.
what came after
CA storage spread from England to South Africa (1934–36), the Netherlands and North America, and became the standard way to hold apples, pears and other produce for months. It let growers sell into the off-season and turned regional harvests into global supply chains.
references
- PUT TO SLEEP (Huntly Press and District Gazette)
- HOW APPLES BREATHE (Evening Post)
- CA Manual — history of controlled atmosphere storage
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