The use of canned foods dates back to Napoleonic days when a French candy maker, Nicolas Appert, conducted food preservation experiments by canning soups and vegetables in champagne bottles.
By the early 1800s, the French Navy carried bottled vegetables on their ships worth reportedly good result. Other than navies, explorer also using canned food for their journey. One of the explorer utilized canned products was Otto von Kozebuem, who used them on his three-year voyage to the Bering Strait and South Seas in 1815-1818.
Soon after, a patent for canning in ‘bottles or other vessels of glass, pottery, tin or other metals or fit materials’ was granted to an Englishman, Peter Durant.
The French canned sardine industry developed form 1824, when Joseph Colin opened the first fish cannery.
In the late 1800s, Luigi Stampacchia received patent for a process using a double-action press to produce a ‘double-drawn’ can and the first ‘ironed’ was produced.
Can openers were invented until 1858, so early cans came with instructions: Cut around the top near the outer edge with a chisel and hammer. At the same year (1858), John Mason invented glass jar that still bears his name and home canning became feasible.
A US patent was granted in 1904 to James Rigby for producing cans with the wall thickness reduced by burnishing.
During World War II some food cans had wicks on them like candle. The wicks were attached to an inside tube. When soldiers lit the wick, the tube heated the food.
It was not until the 1960s that the first commercial beverage cans were produced by the drawing and ironing process developed in the 1800s. The introduction of the ‘easy open’ end in the early 1960s led to wide consumer acceptance.
Since 1959, when Coors Brewery made the first two-piece aluminium can, nearly all beverages cans, , as well as many similar types of food container are manufactured through the operation known as drawing and ironing.
In 1918, scientists developed a way to measure the rate of heat penetration into a can or jar. Finally they figure out that pressure canning at 240-250 ° F completely destroys the bacteria.
History of food canning
