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Image / Van Camp Seafood Company and French Sardine Company on Terminal Island

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Title
Van Camp Seafood Company and French Sardine Company on Terminal Island
Alternative Title
Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection;
Creator
Schultheis, Herman
Contributor
Made accessible through a grant from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation
Date Created and/or Issued
Circa 1938
Contributing Institution
Los Angeles Public Library
Collection
Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
Rights Information
Images available for reproduction and use. Please see the Ordering & Use page at http://tessa.lapl.org/OrderingUse.html for additional information.
Description
Title supplied by cataloger.; Herman J. Schultheis was born in Aachen, Germany in 1900, and immigrated to the United States in the mid-1920s after obtaining a Ph.D. in mechanical and electrical engineering. He married Ethel Wisloh in 1936, and the pair moved to Los Angeles the following year. He worked in the film industry from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, most notably on the animated features Fantasia and Pinocchio. His detailed notebook, documenting the special effects for Fantasia, is the subject of a 14-minute short-subject included on the film's DVD. In 1949, he started employment with Librascope as a patent engineer. Schultheis was an avid amateur photographer who traveled the world with his cameras. It was on one of these photographic exhibitions in 1955 that he disappeared in the jungles of Guatemala. His remains were discovered 18 months later. The digitized portion of this collection represents the images Schultheis took of Los Angeles and its surrounding communities after he relocated to the area in 1937.; Photograph included in the Exhibit: L.A. Landmarks - Lost and Almost Lost.
Terminal Island launched a worldwide tuna canning industry. In 1912 Wilbur Wood, one of the men attributed with inventing the tuna canning process, opened the California Tunny Company located at 338 Cannery Street in Terminal Island. Two years later he sold it to Frank Van Camp who operated it as the Van Camp Seafood Company from 1914 through 1997 when the name changed to that of his signature brand name Chicken of the Sea Cannery. Frank and his son Gilbert introduced innovations such as refrigerated fishing boats that remained industry standards for decades. They also lead a successful campaign to introduce tuna to the average American consumer, by proposing that the San Pedro canners pool their advertising funds and set the price at a low ten cents per can. Terminal Island also played a crucial role in both World Wars as a major shipbuilding center, and housed a Japanese-American community of nearly 3,000 residents, who were the first in the nation to be forcibly removed from their homes and interned during World War II. In 2012 the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Los Terminal Island to its 2012 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.
A man stands at the opposite dock looking across the water at a row of fishing boats and tuna boats docked in Fish Harbor at Terminal Island in front of the Van Camp Seafood Company and the French Sardine Company.
Type
Image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;11 x 15 cm.
Photographic prints
Identifier
00100895
Herman J Schultheis Collection; Los Angeles Photographers Collection;
N-010-398 8x10
CARL0005114743
http://173.196.26.125/cdm/ref/collection/photos/id/39997
Subject
Van Camp Sea Food Company
Tuna industry--California--Terminal Island
Fish canneries--California--Terminal Island
Industrial facilities--California--Terminal Island
Boats and boating--California--Terminal Island
Fishing boats--California--Terminal Island
Docks--California--Terminal Island
Rope--California--Terminal Island
Islands--California, Southern
Terminal Island (Calif.)
Pacific Ocean
Schultheis Collection photographs

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