In late 1953 the Swanson company had 260 tons of frozen turkey in ten refrigerated railroad cars. The cars had to keep moving to stay cold.
A salesman named Gerry Thomas proposed a solution. Sell the turkey as a frozen dinner in a partitioned aluminum tray. The first run was 5,000 trays at 98 cents. In 1954, the first full year, Swanson sold ten million.
The invention is disputed. The company’s bacteriologist and the Swanson brothers have also been credited. The tray itself was borrowed from airline food service.