The food industry seems to many of us a rather trivial onset. There are few those who know that 150 years ago the conservation of the nourishments, especially those of animal orgin, through practical methods in order to make the foods remain consumable for a long period of time, represented preoccupation of great interest. Besides, product of this kind were often considered a miracle and their rarity made them almost impossible tu buy. The preserved nourishments were considered to be precious goods, especially for the shipmen who travelled for weeks and months on end or for the military troops who left in prolonged campaigns. For longlasting expeditions men needed provisions to outstay to the deficient transportation conditions, to resist to the temperature variations and, at the same time, to maintain the nutrient qualities. Although there were used smoking methods, salting, marinating or drying, the preservation of the vitamins, a fundamental condition for those geared to such activities, remained an unsolvable problem. In spite of whatever measures, the food was impairing too qiuckly, making the stocking of some important quantities useless. The invention that dictated the surpassing of such impasses dates from the Napoleonic Age, the end of the 18th century.

On the French territory the attempts of solving the problems of the preservation of the nourishments was stimulated by the announcement of an award of 12000 francs, the sum which was to be given to that person who would manage to preserve the food for the soldiers, in order for the food to be taken anywhere and irrespective of the season. It didn't last long till the cook chef Nicolas Appert presented a process of preserving through heating. For this he used sealed jars with cork lids tied with a metallic fiber/thread. Even if his technics of preservation didn't compare to that we use nowadays, Appert's invention has the merit of having constituted the beginning of new quests. At the middle of 19th century, the French physician Luis Pasteour managed to prove in a scientific way the principles suggested centuries ago before Appert. The phisician descovered the bacteria responsible for the deterioration of the food and presented the modality of destroying them by heat treatment.

Thus, the pasteurization became a principle accepted in the scientific world. In 1810 Napoleon handed Nicolas Appert the title of "The man's benefactor ", rewarding his initiative with a consistent prize, even if, in time, his jars turned out to be hard to manipulate on trips as a result of the risc of breaking.

In the same period, the Englishmen improved the preservation technique through obtaining some correct combinations between pasteurization and packing. On the 25th of Mai 1810, Peter Durand and Augustus de Heinne obtained the British licence for the conservation of food in heavy iron boxes - another step towards the apparition of the can the way we know it today.     

In 1813 the soldiers from the British Navy used for the preservation of the food solid iron boxes which weighed more than the content and which were detached with the help of the chisel and the hammer. A few decades later, in 1858, there appeared the first can- detachers/disentanglers which were detained by the grocers who detached the lid of the can at the moment of selling. At one time with the technology progress it gets to the production of boxes made of thinner tin, their weight diminishing considerably.