Nicolas Appert

1749-1841

French Inventor

Nicolas Appert was born in 1749 in Châlons, which lies in the Champagne district of France. He developed an industrial method for canning food and beverages that is still used today.

Appert, who came from a long line of farmers and innkeepers, was born at his family's inn. As a boy, he learned to cook and to cork champagne bottles. He learned more about food and wine by working at other inns and as a master chef for a duke and duchess.

In 1784 Appert used an inheritance to open a candy and grocery shop in Paris. The following year, he married Elisabeth Benoist, with whom he had five children. When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, Appert contributed money to the revolutionary army and represented his political district at Louis XVI's execution. His prominence led to his arrest on false charges during the chaotic period known as the Terror.

As his grocery business expanded into wholesale produce in the 1790s, Appert began to experiment with preserving food beyond the harvest season. He was dissatisfied with traditional preservation techniques such as drying or adding sugar, salt, or vinegar because he believed they spoiled the taste and healthfulness of food. Appert used champagne bottles, which were thick enough to withstand the pressure of bubbles, for his first experiments. He filled them with prepared food, leaving room at the top for expansion, corked and bound them, and then heated them in boiling water. He hypothesized that "heat destroys or at least neutralizes the fermentation that changes the quality of animal and vegetable substances." Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) later credited Appert with being the first to understand the basic principle of pasteurization.

By 1802 Appert had moved from his Paris workshop to a large property in Massy that combined factory and farm so that food could be preserved where it was grown. One of the factory kitchens was equipped with large brass pots with compartments for holding meat or chicken and faucets on the bottom for pouring off broth. Another was reserved for dairy products and a third for fruits and vegetables. There was a room for washing and rinsing jars, another for labeling and packaging, and a laboratory for testing new products. Appert supervised the factory, which employed up to fifty people during harvest season, and continued to maintain his shop in Paris.

Appert enlarged his markets throughout the early 1800s. He traveled to port cities in France and asked naval authorities to test his preserved meats and vegetables as a remedy for malnutrition during long ocean voyages. After a year on board ship, the food was praised for its perfect preservation and acclaimed as "advantageous for sailors." Appert also continued to enlarge his range of products. He experimented with red wine, which spoiled during exportation, by resealing and heating several bottles and then storing them on a Caribbean-bound ship. Two years later, when the bottles were returned, a wine connoisseur compared them to unpreserved wine Appert had kept in his cellar. He found the preserved wine superior in every dimension.

In an attempt to win support for his research, Appert took samples of his food to the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry. He was awarded 12,000 francs with the stipulation that he either patent his process or publish a detailed description. Appert, who believed he was serving humanity by sharing his discoveries, wrote The Art of Preserving All Animal and Vegetable Substances for Several Years in 1810. Reviews were positive, and two revised editions as well as German, English, Italian, and Swedish translations followed. Despite his success, Appert struggled financially because of the high cost of his equipment. His prospects were beginning to improve when the Prussian and Austrian armies invaded France in 1814 and destroyed his factory at Massy. One year later, after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the British turned his property into a hospital.

Forced to start over at age 64, Appert received a subsidy from the government to build a new factory in Paris that used tin cans instead of glass jars. He designed his own tinsmith where up to 1,500 cans per month were made to his specifications. He won a gold medal for his canned products in 1820 and a 2,000-franc prize from the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry in 1824. Appert's last invention was a process for making gelatin, dried bouillon, and concentrated milk in an autoclave, a kind of pressure cooker.

When the government stopped subsidizing the rent on his Paris factory, Appert moved yet again and built a new factory at the age of 78. He received a small award from the Ministry of Commerce and Transportation in 1832, but was refused the prestigious Legion of Honor award. He retired in 1836 to Massy. He died alone in 1841 at the age of 91 and was buried in a pauper's grave.

LINDSAY EVANS