While the legacy of Henry Ginaca lies in the growth of an agricultural industry that powered Hawai'i's economy for nearly a century, the immediate impact of his work may best be measured in pineapples per minute.
Ginaca, the son of an Italian civil engineer, left his job as a mechanical draftsman in San Francisco to work at Honolulu Iron Works near the turn of the century.
In 1911, pineapple magnate James D. Dole hired Ginaca to design a machine that would automate the laborious process of preparing pineapples for canning, which in those days required peeling and slicing the fruit by hand.
The first experimental model was completed within a year and was a remarkable success. The Ginaca machine, as it would be called, cut each fruit into a precisely measured cylinder, trimmed the tops and bottoms and removed the core — all at a rate of 50 pineapples per minute. Improvements to the design would eventually double its efficiency.
Ginaca's invention (variations of which are still used today) tripled Dole's production capabilities and helped to establish pineapple as a centerpiece of Hawai'i's rising agricultural economy.
Ginaca returned to the Mainland in 1914, joining his brothers in a mining business. He died four years later during a Spanish flu outbreak.
