Enter the Ball brothers. In 1880, the year after Mason’s original patent expired, ... The museum has more than 1,000 canning jars in its collection, Johnson says.

In the late 1850s — 1858 to be exact — when the Mason fruit jar was patented by tin smith, John Mason, everything changed in the world of canning. The Mason jar solved the food preservation ...

The Mason jar is named after John Landis Mason who introduced a ribbed neck and a screw-on cap to “heat-based canning” jars that brought to the canning process a reliable airtight seal.

Many companies produced glass canning jars, including Lustre, Climax, Atlas, Swayzee and Samco. A Buffalo, N.Y., family named Ball, headed by William Charles Ball and his five brothers, produced ...