In the year 1810 Peter Durand, an English merchant secured a patent from the English Government for the preservation of fruits, vegetables and fish in airtight, tin-plated, wrought iron cans. Durand also obtained a patent on metal containers. The latter gave rose to the term tin can.
He did not claim to be the discoverer of the process, but it was an ‘invention communicated to me by a certain foreigner’.
Peter Durand was himself from a Huguenot family with relations on both sides of the Channel who dealt in food and wine, and there could have been plenty of opportunity for Durand to communicate with Appert and other French client inventors.
In 1811, Durand sold the patent engineer Bryan Donkin for £1,000 and new owners soon were making the first ‘tin cans’ at the phenomenal rate of ten cans per man per day.
With the tin mines in England, tin plated steel was soon being produced in commercial quantities.
Peter Durant of food canning process
