The modern 2-piece canning lid was born. Canning technology continues to develop. Brands such as Quattro Stagioni use single piece canning lids that work similarly to the older 2-piece canning lid design. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile.
Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. The other partner John Gamble led the experiments and the running of the factory when the cans rolled off the floor that summer of The first high-profile plaudit had come from the Duke of Wellington, then Lord Wellesley, who wrote in April to say how tasty he had found Donkin's canned beef, and recommended it for both the Navy and Army.
The duke requested more cans to try out on his family and the following day, Donkin collected the glowing letter from the Counting House in Lombard Street. The duke's secretary Jon Parker wrote:. He wishes you to furnish him with some of your printed papers in order that His Majesty and many other individuals may according to their wish expressed have an opportunity of further proving the merits of the things for general adoption.
Anything but fulsome praise from the royals might have spelt the end for Donkin's experiments. He had plenty of other projects on the go, according to his diaries, like a new counting instrument, a mill in Greenwich and a new shoemaking machine devised by Sir Marc Brunel.
His early cans ranged from four to 20lb in weight. The oldest survivor can be found in the Science Museum in London, measuring 14cm 5. In , the Admiralty bought lb of Donkin's food, feeding it to sick sailors, because it was mistakenly thought that scurvy was due to over-reliance on salted meat.
The praise from seamen for this unexpected addition to their daily menu was warm and glowing, from every corner of the globe.
William Warner, surgeon of the ship Ville de Paris, wrote in that canned food "forms a most excellent restorative to convalescents, and would often, on long voyages, save the lives of many men who run into consumption [tuberculosis] at sea for want of nourishment after acute diseases; my opinion, therefore, is that its adoption generally at sea would be a most desirable and laudable act".
In Chile, there is a cove named Caleta Donkin, so called because the crew led by Capt Fitzroy were so delighted with their canned food. Donkin and Gamble even had a system of quality assurance - each can spent one month of incubation at C heat before going out. And each was numbered to help track its origins. Perhaps the most gratifying seal of approval came from Sir Joseph Banks, on behalf of the Royal Society, who opened a can of veal two-and-a-half years old and declared it to be in "a perfect state of preservation".
Banks went on to describe Donkin's work as "one of the most important discoveries of the age we live in". On the back of such praise, business with the Admiralty took off. In , the order was for 2,lb and in it was 9,lb. Then other players came on to the market, clearly infringing the year patent. He expanded his client base by wooing polar explorers like Parry. For them, canned food was hugely beneficial because the perils of getting stuck in the ice all winter meant they had to haul two or three years of food on voyages.
The upmarket London retailer was quick off the mark to start a canning business on its Piccadilly premises, offering wealthy Britons - the Empire builders - a "taste of home". Donkin's interest in canning ended in when he dissolved his partnership with Hall and Gamble. It isn't clear why, but the impression from his diaries is that canning was more of an engineering challenge than a passion. Some of his personal letters reveal a man finding the commercial climate to be tough, as a debt-ridden nation adjusted to peace after years of fighting.
To his brother in , he says: "What do you think will be the end of these portentous times? From the information I obtained during my recent peregrinations; universal distress seems to pervade the whole community of this country and the manufacturing part in particular. These anxieties did not blunt his enthusiasm. Donkin continued his papermaking machine business and later assisted Sir Marc Brunel in tunnelling under the River Thames.
Noting he had been a magistrate in Surrey in his later years, his obituary from the Royal Society said: "His life was one uninterrupted course of usefulness and good purpose. After his death in , he was buried in a family plot in Nunhead Cemetery, south London. It's an indication of how much history has overlooked his achievements that on a recent visit, cemetery staff were unaware who he was.
His resting place is overshadowed by the imposing sarcophagus next to him for the shipbuilder John Allan. And even on his own grave, his name appears rather as a footnote, below three other relatives named Bryan Donkin and their spouses. There is no mention of his achievements. Donkin was a fascinating man and a brilliant engineer who has been recognised in his sphere, says John Nutting, editorial director of The Can Maker magazine.
But he's been forgotten by the wider world. He wasn't a guy like Brunel who was involved in ships and trains and all those big infrastructure projects. Donkin's engineering company remained in Bermondsey until , when it moved to Chesterfield. His successor at the helm of the world's first tin canning business, John Gamble, moved the factory to Cork in Ireland in , where there was a larger supply of cattle and the shipping route to the US offered an endless supply of custom.
When Gamble exhibited an array of canned foods at the Great Exhibition in , to widespread approval, it must have seemed like the tin can's switch from military necessity to household must-have was only a matter of time. But then came a food scandal that threatened to strike the fledgling industry with a fatal blow. In January , a group of meat inspectors gathered at the Royal Clarence Victualling Yard in Portsmouth and proceeded to open cans of meat destined for the Navy.
It was not until they opened the 19th can that they found one fit for human consumption. Instead of perfectly preserved beef, they found putrid meat so rotten that the stone floors needed to be coated with chloride of lime to mask the stench, according to an account in the Illustrated London News.
Sometimes the smell was so overpowering the inspectors had to stop and leave the room for fresh air before resuming their grim task. They fished out pieces of heart, rotting tongues from a dog or sheep, offal, blood, a whole kidney "perfectly putrid", ligaments and tendons and a mass of pulp. Some organs appeared to be from diseased animals. They condemned cans that day, throwing them into the sea. The remaining 42 cans were given to the poor. This scene was repeated across the country, as part of a nationwide inspection ordered by the Admiralty.
They found meat at Navy depots to be "garbage and putridity in a horrible state". A letter to the Times in revealed that officers of The Plover threw 1,lb of canned meat overboard in the Bering Straits because "we found it in a pulpy, decayed and putrid state, and totally unfit for men's food".
The supplier in question was Stephan Goldner, who had won the Admiralty contract in by undercutting all rivals, thanks to cheap labour working at his meat factory in what is now Romania. That contract grew significantly in when the Admiralty introduced preserved meat as a general ration one day a week. The following year complaints began to trickle in from victualling yards in the UK and from British seamen around the world that other parts of animals were being found in canned meat.
Despite this, Goldner was awarded another contract in , with a warning that his meat needed to be genuine. In order to meet the demand, he asked if he could increase the size of the cans, but he didn't cook the meat sufficiently.
A government select committee was appointed to investigate and questions were asked in the Commons. There was a danger that this bad publicity might put people off canned food for good, a threat that still lingered 10 years later. Writing in Victorian London in , the doctor and writer Andrew Wynter said: "It does seem suicidal folly on the part of the public to conceive a prejudice against a discovery which is of great public importance in a hygienic point of view, and which has been attested and proved.
Goldner was banned from ever supplying the Navy again. It was also revealed that he had supplied the meat to Sir John Franklin's ill-fated expedition that perished in the Arctic in mysterious circumstances in He eventually came up with a radical innovation: food packed in champagne bottles, sealed airtight with an oddly effective mixture of cheese and lime. Running a bustling lab and factory, Appert soon progressed from champagne bottles to wide-necked glass containers.
In his preserved foods which came to include vegetables, fruit, meat, dairy and fish were sent out for sea trials with the French navy. By , his factory had begun to experiment with meat packed in tin cans, which he soldered shut and then observed for months for signs of swelling. Canned food also predated, by around 30 years, the can opener itself.
After winning the prize, Appert spent many more years working to improve his method amidst the chaos of post- Napoleonic France. His factories remained innovative but unprofitable, and he died a poor man in and was buried in a common grave. By then variants of his process were used to can foods ranging from New York oysters and Nantes sardines to Italian fruit and Pennsylvania tomatoes.
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