Who invented commercially produced quick-freezing frozen food ("flash freezing") that launched the modern frozen-food industry?

Clarence Birdseye, in the 1920s, developed a quick-freezing process that launched the modern frozen-food industry. Between 1912 and 1917, Birdseye, a Brooklyn native, lived in Labrador, where he worked briefly on a hospital ship then started a fox-breeding venture. It was during this period that he learned about the customs of the indigenous Inuit, who would go ice-fishing then let their catch immediately freeze in the frigid air. When this frozen fish, which was left out in the cold, eventually was cooked, it tasted fresh.

After returning to America, Birdseye took a job in 1920 with a lobbying group for commercial fisherman. In this role, he discovered that large amounts of freshly caught fish spoiled before making it to stores. Recalling the flash freezing he’d done in Labrador, Birdseye believed he could apply this concept to commercially frozen food and in 1923 founded a frozen fish company in New York. The Postum Cereal Company (maker of Grape-Nuts and other food items) saw the potential in Birdseye’s innovations and acquired his business in 1929. Postum was renamed General Foods and included the Birds Eye Frosted Food Division. Frozen food still took time to catch on. Large numbers of Americans first tasted frozen food in the 1940s, during World War II.