Some History: Hydroponics | ||
First described by Sir Francis Bacon in Sylva Sylvarum published in 1627, the art of growing of plants and vegetables using minerals in water, without soil, gained popularity during the 1930s when it was promoted by Professor William Gericke of the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Gericke coined the term Hydroponics (from the Greek words hydro = water and ponos = labor) and created a sensation by growing tomato vines twenty-five feet high in his back yard. | ||
Modern hydroponics takes advantage of controlled conditions to offer many advantages for food production:
An early success of hydroponics was its use by Pan American Airlines in the 1930s on Wake Island, a rocky atoll in the Pacific used for refueling, to grow vegetables for the passengers. Hydroponics was necessary because there was no soil on Wake Island, and it was very expensive to airlift in fresh vegetables. Today, hydroponics is used in numerous large commercial farming operations. |
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