Milk Bottles
Milk didn’t always come in square paper and plastic cartons. It actually came from cows, and still does, unless it’s from plants.
In the 19th Century in Europe the town cow keeper would take his cow around to each house so the people who lived there could milk the cow themselves. In the 1860s a metal container, called a “churn,” (not a butter churn) was developed so the cow person could take the container instead of the cow to each house. As milk became sterilized, someone invented a round milk bottle in 1884 with the creamery’s name embossed on the bottle, followed by paint on glass bottles.
Soon great minds discovered square bottles, which took up less room in the fridge. Milkmen drove trucks to deliver milk, cream, cottage cheese, chocolate milk and even ice cream. And then came the wood pulp paper milk cartons covered in polyethylene wax which cost less to transport, causing milkmen to disappear from the labor force, much to the regret of some of them and some “homemakers” to whom they delivered.