Baking & Snack - February 2016 - 40

2016 BAKING HALL OF FAME

Inventive

Engineers
Equipment pioneers Jacob Perkins and Joseph Baker
left a legacy of technological innovation.
by Laurie Gorton
In the late 19th century, two North
Americans laid the foundations for technology that would utterly change the way
bread, cookies, crackers and snacks are
made. Today, the company carrying forward the legacies of Joseph Baker (1823-92)
and Jacob Perkins (1766-1849) continues to bear
their names, and the influence of these class of 2016
Baking Hall of Fame inductees can be felt at hundreds
of thousands of bakeries around the world that operate
Baker Perkins equipment every day.
Engineering genius characterized both men. Mr.
Perkins was a prolific inventor who moved to
England from Massachusetts in 1819. Much of
his work and that of his successors involved
steam technologies, including a steam oven
for baking bread. Mr. Baker, a Canadian,
invented a simple combined flour scoop
and sifter for household use. He moved
his successful business from Ontario to
England in the 1870s.
Mr. Perkins held 21 American and 19
British patents for various types of steampowered machinery, although it was his son,
Angier March Perkins, who first applied steam
to baking ovens. Another son, Loftus Perkins, is
credited with making the crucial breakthrough, the
stopped-end steam tube oven, which he patented in
1865. This transformed baking of bread in ovens because, until this time, there was no satisfactory way of
controlling oven temperature.
The key invention by Mr. Baker was a handheld flour
sifter, patented in Canada in 1870 and the US in 1871.

40 Baking & Snack February 2016 / www.bakingandsnack.com

Only three years after transferring his business to the
UK, he developed biscuit-making machinery, the
first time that a sector of the food industry had been
mechanized. Invention of travelling and stationary ovens soon followed. Joseph Baker & Sons Ltd. rapidly
became the most important food machinery manufacturer in the UK.
A.M. Perkins & Son Ltd., the business established in
1830 by his son, Angier, continued his father's fascination with steam technologies. At one point, its steam
engines and boilers were represented by Joseph Baker &
Sons. When Perkins came out with its own steam oven,
the two companies became fierce rivals. During World
War I, however, they teamed up to build automated
baking equipment for armies in the field. In 1920, they
merged to form Baker Perkins Ltd.
"The pioneering efforts of Joseph Baker and Jacob
Perkins in the introduction of automated bread plants
in the 19th century started a process of continual improvement that is still ongoing," said Brett Warburton,
director, Warburtons Ltd., Bolton, UK, and a member
of the 2015 class of the Baking Hall of Fame. "The development of today's high-output, hygienic, sophisticated equipment can be traced back to their initiative
and abilities."
Underpinning the post-war success of the company was development of its apprenticeship program.
Dick Preston, president of the Baker Perkins Historical
Society, noted that it "provided trained engineers to the
world at large [and] set a level of excellence recognized
both nationally and internationally today." He is one
who benefited from this program.
Another former employee, Clive Tolson, president of

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Baking & Snack - February 2016

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