Opinion
Canned food is 200 years old
The history of canned foods is precisely 200 years old on 25 August 2010. On that date in 1810, a Londoner by the name of Peter Durand was granted a British patent No 3372 for preserving animal and vegetable foods that described the use of tinplate containers.
Two years later, the patent was sold for £1,000 to partners Bryan Donkin and John Hall, who set up the first can-making factory and cannery at Bermondsey in South London to produce canned foods for the British Admiralty.
The health of crews on expeditions was improved by the canned foods, and those later discovered in the 1930s were found to be safe to eat, having lain untouched for more than a century.
In North America, Thomas Kensett and Ezra Daggett set up a food preserving company in 1819 using glass bottles. Once tinplate cans were adopted, the technique became more commercially successful, with canning plants for products such as condensed milk being set up in the 1850s. The industry grew using automated processes, and by the beginning of the 20th century there were more than 2,000 canneries filling 600m cans a year.
It has since grown into a worldwide industry making more than 400bn canned food and drinks products a year.
But Peter Durand didn’t invent canned food. Frenchman Nicolas Appert started experimenting with the preservation of foods in 1804 using sealed glass bottles. In 1809, he had succeeded and presented his findings to the French government, but it required that his findings be published. His findings appeared in 1810 under the title L’Art de Conserver pendant plusieurs années toutes les Substances Animales et Végétales (The Art of Preserving All Kinds of Animal and Vegetable Substances), and Appert was presented with a 12,000 Franc award. He was also awarded a gold medal from the Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale (Society for the Encouragement of National Industry).
Appert used the award to finance his canning factory at Massy, south of Paris, which continued to operate until 1933. In France, he is celebrated by the canning process being called Appertisation.
Another Frenchman, Phillipe de Girard, has been shown to have first demonstrated canned foods at the Royal Society in London in January 1811. In registering the patent, Durand had acted as an agent for de Girard during the time when France was at war with England.
Source: World Press Online
About the author
Bill Bruce is group editorial director of FoodBev Media
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