Henry Gabriel Ginaca (May 19, 1876 – October 19, 1918) was an American engineer who invented, at the direction of Hawaii pineapple magnate James Dole, a machine that could peel and core pineapples automatically called the Ginaca machine.

Biography

Ginaca was born on May 19, 1876 in either California or Nevada. His first job was at the San Francisco Union Iron Works. He was later hired by the

Honolulu Iron Works Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island o ...

. In 1911 he began working for James Dole at the

Hawaiian Pineapple Company Dole plc (previously named Dole Food Company, Standard Fruit Company) is an Irish agricultural multinational corporation headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. The company is among the world's largest producers of fruit and vegetables, operating with ...

. After inventing the "Ginaca Machine", Ginaca and his brothers returned to California in 1914. He died on October 19, 1918, in Hornitos, California during the Spanish flu epidemic.

The "Ginaca Machine"

Ginaca was hired by James Dole in 1911 to build a machine that could make

canning Canning is a method of food preservation in which food is processed and sealed in an airtight container (jars like Mason jars, and steel and tin cans). Canning provides a shelf life that typically ranges from one to five years, although u ...

pineapples more efficient. By 1913, Ginaca built a machine that removed the pineapple skin, then cored and sliced the fruit so that it would fit neatly in the can. Cannery workers would then inspect the sliced pineapple to trim away any thing that wouldn't fit in a can. The machine exponentially increased the number of pineapples that could be cored in one minute from 15 pineapples to 35. A higher speed machine was later invented that could peel and core 100 pineapples per minute. This revolutionized the fruit canning industry by making pineapple Hawaii's second-largest crop, after

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ginaca, Henry G. 1876 births 1918 deaths 20th-century American inventors Engineers from Hawaii Deaths from the Spanish flu pandemic in California 20th-century American engineers