When Exactly Were Egg Cartons Invented?

Eggs are delicate but protected from cracking by the unique structure of the modern egg carton. Long before you could find everywhere, eggs were shipped in large wooden bins that caused damage when the eggs would travel on unpaved roads. Efforts to improve egg storage increased once railway systems simplified transporting eggs across American state lines for commerce.

Hundreds of patents for egg cartons appeared in the late 19th century and early 20th century, all claiming to be the version that would cause the least product breakage. The key challenge in building a better carton was how to protect each egg individually. Strides toward improvement were made in 1867, when John and George Stevens patented a transport case with trays providing separation of the eggs.



Other manufacturers built on this advancement, modifying approaches as the boom in paper mills in America granted wider access to improved materials. Now that the egg carton was more secure, innovators looked to load the eggs into cartons more efficiently. Morris Koppelman, a Russian immigrant to the U.

S., patented the first system for packing fragile items like eggs in 1921. From there, in 1926, Francis H.

Sherman combined carton and packing system to create the first known automation of placing eggs into the type of carton still found on market shelves. Sherman's invention closely resembles modern egg carton technology. The egg carton enables safe shipping nationwide, to the point where we can now .

A pivotal egg carton design was invented to keep a hotel owner happy Perhaps the most celebrated of the egg carton innovators is Joseph Coyle, a Canadian inventor and newspaper publisher whose design advanced thinking around the carton to what we know today. Coyle's first cartons arrived in 1918, and were first assembled by hand until machinery caught up to production a few years later. Coyle soon retired from the newspaper business to focus on these cartons and his design dominated the North American market for decades.

While Coyle was an entrepreneur, he wasn't fully invested in packaging design until he heard the complaints of a local hotel owner, who too often received shipments of broken eggs at his business. By this time, egg trays that separated the precious cargo were already on the market, but the design proved capable of further improvements. Coyle took it upon himself to brainstorm ideas on behalf of the frustrated hotel owner, ultimately landing on not only a revised carton that better cushioned each egg but also advancing the creation of machines which could produce these cartons at scale.

The efforts of Coyle (and all the other inventors dedicated to improving the egg carton) have enabled us to focus on the beyond if it's in one piece. Recommended.