This is insane! How people fooled time with canned goods

If in childhood your grandmother persistently shoved a three‑liter jar of pickles at you with the words “Take it, it’ll come in handy,” don’t feel alone. Whole generations grew up with cellars packed with jars, and a firm belief that harvests must be preserved at any cost. Today this may seem like a quirk, but in fact our ancestors used a solution that required thousands of years of technological progress to discover. Humanity quickly and intuitively understood that seasons change, foods run out, and yet we always want them. The path to the first hermetically sealed jar with a long shelf life took people a long time and cost many lives, but when the idea was brought to fruition, the world changed forever. The invention of canned goods affected everything—from the way wars were fought to the choice of tourist destinations.

Salt was worth its weight in gold

Long before canned goods appeared, people learned to cheat time with whatever was at hand. Meat and fish were salted, smoked, sun‑dried; grains and dairy products were fermented; vegetables were soaked in vinegar or honey. Each of these methods altered the flavor and texture of foods but extended

Credit for the breakthrough goes to the military. In the late 18th century, the French army suffered from scurvy and spoiled provisions to such an extent that the government announced a large cash prize for anyone who could find a reliable way to preserve food for a long time. The task was taken up by Parisian confectioner and cook Nicolas Appert. Through trial and error he discovered that if food is tightly sealed in glass containers and properly heated, it stops spoiling. The cook saw the source of the problem as oxygen penetrating the container, and the essence of his research was to somehow eliminate the air. It took Nicolas 14 years to perfect the technology. Appert sequentially tested his method on vegetables, fruits, meat, game, and dairy products before he was convinced of its reliability. In 1809 he presented the method, a year later published the results of his work in a separate treatise, and

An unexpected side effect was discovered with the new technology.

Durand's cans turned out to be so strong that they were very difficult to open. The most convenient way to deal with the tin turned out to be a hammer and chisel, and this continued for almost half a century. The first specialized opener, which was a combination of a bayonet and a sickle, was patented by American Ezra Warner only in 1858. For home use it proved too dangerous, so sellers often opened the cans right in the shop, and buyers carried the contents home already opened. A safer rotary knife with a wheel, familiar to us from modern openers, was invented only in 1870 by William Lyman.

Soldiers' rations

While inventors worldwide were struggling with lids and openers, the can itself managed to earn