Nicolas Appert

Nicolas Appert developed the method of preserving food by sealing it in airtight glass jars and then heating them, a technique that became the basis for modern canning. He was a French confectioner who refined this process over roughly a decade and a half of experimentation in the early 1800s.

Appert won a prize of 12,000 francs offered by the French government for a practical food preservation method suitable for military supply. He received the award in 1810 after officials verified and published his technique, which had been prompted by the difficulty of provisioning Napoleon's armies.

No, Appert used glass jars sealed with corks and wire, not metal cans. It was the British merchant Peter Durand who patented the use of tin-plated iron containers for food preservation later in 1810, adapting Appert's original heat-and-seal principle to a more durable container.

Appert published his findings in 1810 in a work titled "L'Art de conserver les substances animales et végétales" (The Art of Preserving Animal and Vegetable Substances). This publication detailed his heat-processing technique and was commissioned by the French government as a condition of his prize.