Inventor; Industrial Entrepreneur

Condensed Milk.

It was not meteoric or sensational, but the rise of Gail Borden Jr.'s business selling condensed milk was emblematic of the transformations overtaking the American economy. Ultimately the emergance of products like Borden's cans of condensed milk signaled how profoundly new industrial processes would alter not just production and distribution, but the fundamental patterns and expectations of everyday life in American kitchens and at American tables.

Go West.

Borden was born in 1801 in rural, upstate New York. Like so many others, his family moved west, first to Kentucky, then to the Indiana Territory. As a young man Borden taught school and surveyed land in Mississippi. Shortly after marrying, he picked up and moved again, further west, to join his family in Texas. Here he performed more surveys and served as an agent for the Galveston City Company...