The company was founded in 1869 by Joseph Campbell, a fruit merchant, and Abram Anderson, an icebox maker, and was originally known for its jams and jellies. In 1891 it was incorporated as the Joseph Campbell Preserve company I Camden, New Jersey. John T. Dorrance, a brilliant 24-years-old chemist with a. Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was hired by the company in 1894 and three years later developed a process for creating canned soup in condensed form. The new process took water out of the soup during the canning process, thus dramatically reducing production and distribution costs. Soups made with the new production process were awarded a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exhibition and by 1905 were selling at the rate of 40,000 cases per week. John T. Dorrance purchased the company in 1900, and it was entirely owned by his family until 1954. It was as the Campbell Soup Company in 1922.