Food & agriculture · 1810
Canning
Food sealed and boiled in jars and tins stayed edible for years, won a prize from Napoleon.
Nicolas Appert showed in 1809 that heating food in sealed glass preserved it, decades before anyone knew why; Peter Durand patented the tin can in 1810. Canning freed armies, sailors and cities from the harvest calendar.
What it built on 2
Related measurements
The dashed line marks when it first worked.
US households with a refrigerator Latest: 98 % of households (2017) Source: Our World in Data
Height of men by birth year, UK Latest: 177 cm (1980) Source: Our World in Data