James Jefferson Rucker Bristow (1891-1965)

 

'Cousin Rucker' and Orange Juice

 

James Bristow, 73, Dies;
Saved Citrus Industry

James Jefferson Rucker Bristow, inventor of the process for producing citrus concentrate, died yesterday afternoon at Mease Hospital, Dunedin. He was 73.

Mr. Bristow, who in recent years, has been citrus consultant with Redd Laboratories, Largo, resided on State Road 590, Safety Harbor.

BRISTOW, a chemical engineer, was involved in solving citrus problems over a period of almost three decades.. He invented a process of washing citrus, and a machine for extracting essential oils from oranges.

But the invention which actually saved Florida's citrus industry from boom-and-bust ruin was Bristow's concentrate development.

IN TIMES of bumper crops, citrus became so cheap it didn't even pay the grower to have it picked. When harvests were poor, prices soared but many growers could not share in the high prices because they had no crop. During the summer, of course, there was no citrus.

Bristow invented a method of concentration in 1937. A "cooking" or boiling method had been Used for years but was unsatisfactory because of the taste. Bristow's method was to boil it at only 50 degrees, in a vacuum, to take out the water.

Bristow was a business partner at the time of B. C. Skinner and they began to make the concentrate. Production was in a plant in downtown Dunedin, built in 1938 with the financial help of industrialist George Ball of Muncie, lnd.

LATER, Bristow told reporters that Times Editor Nelson Poynter came to him in about 1933 with the idea "that if we would get big enough we could concentrate at least 15 per cent of the citrus crop of Florida, place it in cold storage during. the big production years and sell it during the slim years. He kept behind the idea. He kept after us until we, too, got enthused about the idea."

In its first small plant the firm of Citrus Concentrates Inc., of Dunedin � with Skinner as president and Bristow as manager � began selling concentrate in gallon cans to various institutions. It was the first plant in the world producing satisfactory concentrate.

THE WAR in Europe started and English babies were cut off from the oranges of Spain and Israel. Bristow's citrus concentrates firm came to the rescue. With the help of Poynter, the firm obtained a big Reconstruction Finance Corporation loan to build a huge plant and a government concentrate order of $1 million.

The plant ran to capacity until the war in Europe ended, in May 1945, when the government canceled all contracts.

In that same month, the firm made further history in the citrus industry. It packed the first carload of frozen 4-to-1 concentrate, for sale in drug stores in Washington.

MARVIN Knight, of Clearwater, had sold the drug stores on the idea and asked the Bristow-Skinner team to try to solve the technical problem of freezing the concentrate, then having it taste like fresh juice when reconstituted.

Skinner solved it by using the same process the hospitals had used earlier � adding a bit of. fresh juice.

THE VALUE of the Bristow contribution to the citrus industry is hard to estimate. It has made the industry almost the only healthy agricultural industry in the nation.

Mr. Bristow, born In Georgetown, Ky., moved to the Pinellas area in 1921 from Cincinnati.

[29 Jan 1965]

 

Mr. Orange Juice

(From the Richmond Times-Dispatch)

James J. R. Bristow, 74, died in Dunedin, Florida, recently. His name was virtually unknown outside the Sunshine State, except perhaps in Kentucky, where he was born and where he graduated in 1910 from Georgetown College.

But to Floridians, the name of James Bristow means a. great deal. He was the man who, during the long depression of the 1930's, saved the state's important citrus industry from financial collapse.

In 1937, when winter oranges were a drug on the market, Bristow, after years of patient experimentation, developed a low temperature-high vacuum process for concentrating orange juice. Attempts had been made previously to win a year-round' market by concentration through cooking, but this proved unsatisfactory because it destroyed the tangy citrus taste.

Bristow's discovery made it possible to preserve concentrated juice in cans for indefinite periods. The United States Department of Agriculture was prompt to recognizee that the process would stabilize the all but bankrupt citrus-growing industry. On its recommendation the Reconstruction Finance Corporation granted a loan of 1.5 million dollars to finance construction of a large plant in Dunedin, in Pinellas county.

The success of this pilot plant was followed by others in Florida and throughout the United States. Today 75 per cent of the total citrus crop goes into frozen concentrates. Millions of gallons were shipped abroad during the war under lend-lease to supply needed vitamins for our embattled allies.

The next time you enjoy your breakfast juice, you may remember that there was a time when oranges were to be had only during the winter months, and that James Bristow was the man who made citrus juice a part of America's daily diet.

[Aug. 1, 1965]

 

[The first clipping is from a Pinellas County, Florida paper, the second a later reprint in the Covington Kentucky Post of an item from the Richmond, Virginia Times-Dispatch.]

 


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This page updated 19 May 2001.