The most ancient sources about the extraction of salt by pre-Slavic tribes date from the 5 th century B. C. Later, at least since the 11 th century A.D., salt was acquired by boiling water from the Black Sea and Azov Sea estuaries in the south, and in the north, from the White Sea. By the 12 th century, saltwater springs and underground sources of brine provided salt for the northern European regions of Russia and the area close to the Ural mountains. From the 14 th to the 16 th centuries, primitive captation of springs and the construction of wells were replaced by a special technology of “drilling” with the help of wooden pipes, which permitted the extraction of salt from brine located under the freshwater layer. The construction of saltworks followed the penetration of Russians into eastern Siberia. Peter I ordered the resumption of some of the earlier saltworks and pushed the further development of salt production. By the end of the 19 th century, the annual industrial extraction of salt in Russia exceeded 26 million hundredweight. In 1926, the first salt research station was founded in the Crimea. The Salt Laboratory of the Soviet Academy of Sciences commenced work in Leningrad in 1930, and five years later was reorganized as an All-Union scientific research institute.