WEBVTT - War, Exploration and Beer: How the Tin Can Changed the World 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:21.960 Pushkin too quick. No, it's perfect Pushkin stuff. You got it. 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:26.999 Business History is not only a show about the history 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:30.520 of business, it is also a business. It's the way 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:33.440 our team makes a living. And like most media businesses, 0:00:33.480 --> 0:00:36.720 we have basically two revenue streams. One is ads, the 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:39.760 other one is subscriptions. So if you don't want to 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:42.559 hear the ads, you can subscribe. It's a great way 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:44.519 to support the show, and it means you don't have 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.480 to listen to the ads. If you subscribe, you also 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:51.000 get to listen to lots of other Pushkin shows ad free. 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:53.800 On top of that, you get to binge true crime 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:57.560 shows and you get access to some free audiobooks. It 0:00:57.600 --> 0:01:00.240 costs six dollars and ninety nine cents a month or 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:03.240 thirty nine dollars and ninety nine cents for a year. 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:07.360 You can sign up at Pushkin, dot fm, slash plus, 0:01:07.960 --> 0:01:09.999 or you can do it on the Business History Show 0:01:10.039 --> 0:01:13.520 page in Apple Podcast. And to be clear, we are 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:15.679 delighted to have you listen to the show in whatever 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:18.120 way you want to listen to it. Thank you for 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:32.679 your attention to this matter, Jacob. 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:37.119 Today's show has everything. It's got drama, it's got war, 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:43.520 military exploits, wild inventions, corporate intrigue. It has both monopoly 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:48.320 and trust busting, yes, both sides. And it has a 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:52.760 polar expedition trapped in ice. And it is all this 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:59.400 entire story packed into this little guy right here. A can, 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:05.160 A tin can. The tin can is so ubiquitous, so simple, 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:09.399 you never think about it, and yet I have thought 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:13.080 a lot about it. It is the complete and total 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:16.800 perfection of a technology. It is cheap, it is small, 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:20.000 you can recycle it. It does its job food. Whatever's 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:22.760 in this one I took the label off lasts for years. 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:24.480 But beyond that. 0:02:25.200 --> 0:02:30.120 Railroads are interesting, sure, Chips and computers, yeah, somewhat transformative. 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:36.040 But the can is time travel, endless, summer packed in tin. 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:38.359 I'm Robert Smith, I'm. 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:41.480 Jacob Goldstein, and this is Business History, a show about 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:43.239 the history of business today. 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:46.680 On the show, not one, not two, but three stories 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:49.920 about cans. The can spans two hundred years, and I 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:52.320 brought along the perfect can for each act. 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:53.760 Act one. 0:02:53.840 --> 0:02:58.239 Our first can Napoleon brand baby corn. It represents the 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:03.600 birth of canning technology in France. Our second can Heinz 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:08.320 baked beans, development of the tin in the UK. And 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:13.919 this the humble can of beer represents American corporate takeover 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:23.440 of the entire industry. Oh it's fine, it's fine, my 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:28.920 dad drinking. Sure, let's metaphorically open can number one. Napoleon, 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:33.560 baby corn, and the military culinary complex. So back in 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:39.280 the seventeen nineties, Napoleon Bonaparte had a problem invading Russia. 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:43.120 Not yet, not yet, it's before that. His problem was 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:45.440 a way for him to build up the strength to 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:51.240 invade Russia. His problem was putrid, disgusting food for his troops, 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:55.720 rotting food. So this is after the French Revolution, royals beheaded, 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:58.920 no more kings. France is being run by something called 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:00.559 the Directory. 0:04:00.760 --> 0:04:02.520 I would think it would be the direct Diurete, but 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:03.520 apparently it's not. 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:08.400 The Directory, the Directoire, right, And Napoleon's not yet in charge, 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:10.760 but you know, he's pretty close. He's running the military. 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:14.120 He's waging these military care campaigns for France in places 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:16.960 like Italy and Egypt. And you know, especially if you're 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.800 going to Egypt, right, Like, food is a huge problem. 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:23.239 In order to feed your troops, you have to go 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:25.479 to these really extreme measures. Now, people have done this 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:28.279 for hundreds of years, right, thousands of years. You could 0:04:28.400 --> 0:04:31.240 dry meat, you could smoke meat, you could salt meat. 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:33.719 You know, it's tough, it doesn't taste very good, but 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:36.679 it lasts for a while. For vegetables, you could pickle 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:39.600 them in vinegar. This was a common thing. Again, it 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:42.520 doesn't taste great, right once in a while. But if 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:46.080 you think six months on beef, jerky and pickles, I 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:46.640 think it's bad. 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:47.960 You're not going to be a fighting shape. 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:51.320 Bad for the digestion. And that's what Napoleon realized was 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:53.960 that this wasn't just a logistical problem. This was a 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.200 morale problem. And especially if they're French, they're very demanding 0:04:57.200 --> 0:04:57.800 about this thing. 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:01.039 Right. Oh, they had this thing called hard tech heart tach. 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:05.960 It's a cracker, thick flower and water cracker that's like 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:10.960 been baked four times. There is no moisture whatsoever in it. 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:13.240 It breaks your teeth. They call it a molar breaker. 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:18.360 So Napoleon says, okay, we need to have some sort 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:20.960 of food so I can go on these long campaigns, 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:23.320 you know, the Russian winter and all. And in seventeen 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:27.279 ninety five, the French government, urged on by Napoleon, decides 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:32.160 to do something. The government offers a prize twelve thousand 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:35.680 francs small fortune at the time for anyone who could 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:39.400 come up with a way to preserve large quantities of food. 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:45.320 I love prizes as incentives for technological breakthroughs, right, Like, 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:48.600 it's an interesting kind of big economic idea. Right, How 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:51.000 do you if you're a government and you want some 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:54.719 technological breakthrough to emerge in the world, how do you 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:59.279 incentivize that Napoleon is not inventing this idea? Right? Decades earlier, 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:05.200 the British had famously done something similar for a transportation 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:08.400 problem of their own. They needed a way for ships 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:14.159 to figure out longitude. Right could figure out latitude by 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.400 the stars, but longitude was hard, and the British, I 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:20.279 guess early in the seventeen hundreds, issued a prize for 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:24.000 that and it worked. Somebody invented a clock that works 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:26.360 on a ship and that is enough to tell you 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:29.359 longitude and this still goes on. Interestingly, this is not 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:32.400 some antiquated thing. The one that came to my mind 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:36.640 was the DARPA Grand Challenge in the US funded by 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:39.239 the US military basically the US government in the early 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:43.040 twenty first century, which was for self driving cars, and 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:46.080 it really gave birth to the modern self driving car 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:48.000 industry that is sort of flourishing today. 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:50.320 Yeah. Yeah, So this is what Napoleon does with cans, 0:06:50.320 --> 0:06:52.920 which are sort of the autonomous vehicles of their day, 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:56.360 really sort of right, And the prizes run through something 0:06:56.400 --> 0:07:00.000 called the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry does 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.240 exactly what it says, right, and the nation's scientists start. 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:03.600 Working on it. 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:07.160 But to your point, you could not have predicted who 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:10.320 won this prize because it did not go to a 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.240 scientist or a biologist, someone who worked with the government. 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:17.239 It comes from this unlikely hero. His name is Nicholas Francois, 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:20.040 a Pierre, not a biologist, not a chemist. 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:22.000 He's a chef, perfect par fai. 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:26.880 Technically a candy maker, right. He candies fruits and jams. 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:29.800 He's sort of famous in Paris, and by all accounts 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.800 a very jovial guy. Right. He's a candy maker, He's 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:37.000 the candy man. He's bald, he has these mischievous devil eyebrows. 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:41.080 No training, but he spent his life in hospitality. He 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:44.800 bottled wine for the revolutionaries during the fighting. So in 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:48.280 seventeen ninety five a pair hears about this prize and 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:53.160 in the back of his shop at night, he starts experimenting. Now, 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:57.880 at this point, there is no scientific theory for why 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:01.520 things spoil. You know, maybe the humors are bad, or 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:03.200 demons get into the butter. 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:06.600 They know bacteria exists, but they don't know germs cause disease. 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:07.520 They don't know what's going on. 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:10.920 Yeah, Louis Pastor hadn't even been born yet, right, he's 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:13.240 going to come in fifty sixty years later. So in 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:17.440 his candy shop appairs basically doing trial and error to 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.960 preserve food. He starts with different containers. He starts with 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:24.000 champagne bottles, which apparently is the most popular thing. A 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:25.960 rans they're just lying around, but he's. 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:28.880 Like, and I guess he's thinking, like wine gets preserved, 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:32.480 Champagne is preserved when it's in the bottle. Something's happening there. 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:36.480 Yeah, And honestly, maybe it was the bottle, like they 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:40.720 just didn't know, right, So he starts trying preserving food 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:43.360 in champagne. Maybe it sort of works sometimes, right, then 0:08:43.400 --> 0:08:46.559 he has specialty made jars because you know, getting the 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:49.079 chicken leg into the champagne bottle. I know we've all 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:52.000 tried it. It does not work well. So he starts 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:54.719 filling them with different foods. He starts different ways of 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:59.720 sealing them, wax, cork, cooking them at different temperatures. Hundreds 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:02.200 of bottles he's doing this, He's checking them weeks later, 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.520 months later. Neighbors report that sometimes they would go into 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:07.000 the back of his shop and they would be like 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:11.000 meat slurry on the ceiling because his bottles had exploded. 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:14.440 And then he had as an insight, right, he'd made champagne, 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:17.679 he made wine, and he knows that wine works better, 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:20.160 just tastes better if you get all of the air 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:22.959 out of it. Doesn't know why, but he's like, well, 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:25.959 I'm going to try this with meat. I'm going to 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:28.760 essentially take my jar, fill it up to the very 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:32.200 top with meat, steal it with no air, and then 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:35.200 slowly start boiling it, really get it up to temperature, 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:37.840 because you can't have it rapidly boiling or it will explode. 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:45.440 He experiments like this for ten years, ten years, ten years, which, 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:47.120 if you think about it right, you have to You 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:49.680 don't know if it's worked until you've waited a month, 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:50.400 two months. 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:53.679 It's hard to iterate. You can't get that many iterations 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:54.200 in a year. 0:09:54.520 --> 0:10:00.080 Yeah, and so he figures out that like, essentially, if 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:01.840 you don't boil it enough, it's going to kill you. 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:04.000 But if you boil it too long, the food will 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:07.720 be destroyed, you know. So he's thinking about hospitality and 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:09.720 how someone will want to eat it. It's not just 0:10:09.760 --> 0:10:13.080 a technical thing, it's how do I make get appetizing 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:15.520 And it seems to be working at this point ten 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:18.720 years later. But he has to test it the most 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:21.520 extreme tests you can have for a can of food. 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:23.800 In eighteen oh sixty, goes to the French Navy with 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:30.920 an experiment. He packs eighteen different foods, including green beans, peas, plums, meats, 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.560 seals them, boils them, hands them to a French captain 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:37.679 and says, do your worst. They set sail for four months, 0:10:38.320 --> 0:10:41.440 the summer heat, the roll of the waves, gnarly sailors, 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:44.359 I don't know. Four months later they have a shipboard ceremony. 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:46.760 They bring out the jars. One of them is a 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:50.920 jar of preserved partridges in gravy, very popular in France 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:55.920 at the time. They open it up, doesn't explode, sniff it, 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:59.400 it's all right. No mold, smells like stew, and they 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:05.000 taste it and the woila in crob fresh as a 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:10.600 Montmont cafe sort of probably Partridges, right, this is it, right, 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:13.480 No more rancid salt pork for the troops. Like he 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:16.640 has solved the problem. In eighteen oh nine, the Society 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:20.520 of Encouragement gather as they eat his summer peas in 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:23.720 the middle of winter, and they declare a pair the winner. 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:29.760 Napoleon personally approves the prize payment, but there is a catch. 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:33.920 A pair had a dream of becoming very rich on 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:36.439 his discovery. It's not a scientist, he's a businessman. He 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:37.080 runs a shop. 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:37.360 Right. 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:41.319 He had already started to sell glass preserved foods at 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:43.600 the Maisson de a Paire, his shop. 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:43.839 Right. 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:47.160 He wanted to patent his discovery make a fortune, but 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:50.080 the French government said, wait. 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:50.480 Just a minute. 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:53.840 We know you won, but at this point this is 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:58.040 critical technology for the nation. In order to get the prize, 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:01.960 you have to publish your findings, show everyone your secrets, 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:06.840 but you can't own the intellectual property. That's what the 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:09.280 money is for. Yeah, that's what the prize is for. 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:10.959 They're buying it from him. They do give him a 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:16.240 choice and says, fine, I will take the money and 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:18.600 He wrote a book which you can read to this day. 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:22.320 I read the whole thing. It's not just about the 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:26.840 theory of preserving food. Canning as they called it. By 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:29.520 the way, the can is not for the physical can, 0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:34.120 it's for canister. So jars are canning. Cans are canning. 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:34.360 Right. 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:37.479 The name of his book is the art of preserving 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:40.600 all kinds of animal and vegetable substances for many years. 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:45.319 So it is like canning for dummies. It's a canning cookbook. 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:47.600 It's an exact canning cookbook. Here, read a little bit 0:12:47.640 --> 0:12:48.800 about the summer peas. 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:51.840 Put them in the water bath in order to boil 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:54.080 for an hour and a half when the season is 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:57.480 cool and moist, and two hours when it's hot and dry. Yeah, 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:00.120 it depends on the weather. Love that well, this is 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:02.200 ten years of experimentation talking. 0:13:02.440 --> 0:13:05.880 This guy knows right, and so at this point, Like 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:09.240 a Pair is pretty famous in France. He publishes this book. 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:13.400 Napoleon now has his wagons filled with canned peas. They 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:17.000 call it food a la a pear. So a Pair 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:20.479 uses his prize to build the first food preservation facility. 0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:22.600 He is going to make money off of this. He 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.920 tries and at this point, they're very expensive. This is 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:28.640 essentially bespoke, handmade vegetables. 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:28.880 Right. 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:31.439 He sells it only to the very rich of French society, 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:34.760 but they're the first people on earth to experience this 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:38.760 like radical idea that you did not have to eat 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:40.520 what's in season right now. 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:42.360 It just never occurred like that. 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:45.880 You could have peaches or strawberries if it wasn't the summer. 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:49.120 Like that's insane. It just never happened. But all of 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:51.200 a sudden you could walk in the middle of a 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.040 Parisian winter and see all these things and bring them home. Right, 0:13:54.360 --> 0:13:57.400 it was amazing. Now, at this point Napoleon is in charge, 0:13:57.640 --> 0:13:59.880 decides he's going to try to take over Europe and 0:13:59.920 --> 0:14:02.920 be well fed at the same time, and this would 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:06.560 come back to bite Nicholas a pair after the break, 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:10.000 the military weapon of preserved food leaks. 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:11.120 To francis enemies. 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:34.080 It's jars versus tins on the battlefield. 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:42.560 Okay, we're back from the break. It is time now 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.880 for the story of Can number two. Can number two. 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:50.520 You may recall Heinz Baked Beans technically an American company 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:52.720 but very popular in the UK. This is the UK 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:57.680 version and this chapter is about the mass market for cans. 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:03.440 Mere months after a Pair publishes his strict instructions and 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.520 how to put food in a jar, a patent application 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:10.000 is filed, not in Paris but in London, across the 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:14.760 English Channel. And it's not just about jars, like any patent, 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:18.680 any good patents out there, it lists everything the inventor 0:15:18.720 --> 0:15:20.760 can think of, right, all the ways you can think 0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:25.360 to put food into a container. Bottles yes, jars, yes, pottery, 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:27.760 I don't know. It didn't catch on And crucially for 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:33.680 our story, iron covered in tin. And surprisingly, the patent 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.640 is not from our inventor, Nicholas a Pair. It is 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:39.560 from a merchant who, as far as we know, had 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:43.640 no food experience whatsoever. His name's on various patents through 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:45.920 the years. His name is Peter Durant. 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:48.720 So it's he like a nineteenth century patent troll, just 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:51.480 pile it up intellectual property. Does he start suing people? 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:53.280 It's interesting. 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:55.000 We don't know what he's up to, But when you 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:57.640 look at the fine print of the patent, he doesn't 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:01.000 really say it's his idea. He says, I'm quoting here 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:05.520 an invention communicated to him by a certain foreigner. Residing 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:10.040 abroad are. It does not say who the unnamed foreigner is, 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:13.200 but at this point England France are bitter rivals. You 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:16.880 can understand why a pair or anyone else wouldn't want 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:19.320 to sell military secrets to the British, right, it makes 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:22.720 total sense. Napoleon would throw you in jail, kill you. 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:24.240 Right now? 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:28.120 Is Durand a frontman for Nicholas? 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:30.280 A pair? We don't know. 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:33.520 We know he's granted this patent in the UK and 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:35.920 takes it to the US, and then almost immediately he 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:38.880 sells the patent to someone who actually makes it happen 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:41.240 for about a thousand quid. Right, So the man who 0:16:41.280 --> 0:16:45.920 buys the patent is Brian Duncan. And he was exactly 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:48.560 what the Can needed. He was just a practical guy 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:49.480 who solved problems. 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:49.680 Right. 0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:53.360 He developed the first machinery to make paper. I know 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:56.840 people had handmade paper, right, and he's the one that said, no, 0:16:56.880 --> 0:16:58.840 you can have giant machines to make paper. 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:01.360 Seems remarkably late, but I guess not because the Industrial 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:03.960 Revolution had just come along, right. Everything was hand made 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:05.480 until basically they. 0:17:05.440 --> 0:17:08.879 Yeah, and he had already patented and manufactured the first 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:14.359 steel pen, which if you think about it, a pen 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:15.840 is like a can. 0:17:15.639 --> 0:17:19.080 For ink, a tiny can, a tiny thin can for ink. 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:22.280 So Brian Duncan already had a factory like ready to go, 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:25.080 and at this point you could sort of see that 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:29.760 like military and governments are good encouraging innovation, and they're 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:35.120 great as first purchasers of products because they'll pay anything, right, 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.960 but they're not the best at creating cheap, efficient products. 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:41.840 And for preserved foods to become a worldwide phenomenon, this 0:17:41.920 --> 0:17:45.000 is going to take a half century of Brian Duncan's work, right. 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:47.600 This is an important idea. You hear it all the 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:51.560 time now from people starting companies. This idea that we 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:56.879 think about the breakthrough the prototype, but in fact, going 0:17:56.880 --> 0:17:59.159 from the prototype, which is sort of where France, this 0:17:59.200 --> 0:18:01.320 is a little bit past that, but it's not at scale, 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:05.439 it's not for everybody. It's this military technology that rich 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:08.360 people are also using. Going from that to the cheap 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:12.000 ubiquitous thing is in many ways harder and more important 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:13.240 than the initial breakthrough. 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:16.680 Yeah, and in fact, we think about patents right as 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:20.000 this protection for the inventor, but it's more than that, 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:23.240 Like patents are away for someone to have a protection 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:26.960 while they do what you're talking about, while they perfect 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:28.760 the technology and make it actually happen well. 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:32.679 And the other thing about patents is they force you 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:35.240 to share how to do it, which is part of 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:37.439 the idea. You could keep it a trade secret if 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:39.240 you want. If you figure something out, you could just 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:42.280 not tell anybody and own it for as long as 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:43.560 nobody else figures it out. 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:46.840 Yeah, Coca Cola didn't patent the precise and stamos for 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:47.720 Coca Cola. 0:18:47.800 --> 0:18:49.840 So the patent is a trade off. You get to 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:52.480 own the intellectual property for a fixed amount of time 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:54.040 and then everybody knows. 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:57.359 Now Brian Doncan has to actually make this happen at scale. 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:00.280 They decide they're going to go for cans. No more 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:02.879 exploding bottles, right, it doesn't make any sense right to 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.960 try and transport food long distances in glass. And also, 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:12.200 just as France had a lot of champagne bottling technology, 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:15.560 Britain at this point is the leader in metal technology. 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:19.639 So Brian Duncan and its partners Gamble and Hall, I believe, 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:21.879 and it's Dunk and Gamble and Hall or Duncan, holl 0:19:21.920 --> 0:19:24.840 and Gamble something like that. They take this suspicious pattern, 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:27.480 and they get to work and they immediately see that 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:30.280 metal is the way to go for the future of 0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:34.240 canning technology because glass is kind of stupid. Right, You're 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:36.840 trying to transport food and glass and you have to 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:38.879 like treat it like a little baby. And they'd already 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:42.280 been developing cooking utensils which were made of iron but 0:19:42.440 --> 0:19:45.320 covered in tin. So you have the iron makes it 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:48.240 strong and cheap, right, but you have this non reactive 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:51.560 tin coating so that everything doesn't taste like iron. 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:53.119 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:56.880 And so in eighteen twelve Duncan sets up the first 0:19:56.880 --> 0:20:00.639 can factory. And to your point about innovations, right, the 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:03.840 first cans do not look like this the cans we 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:04.399 have today. 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:07.760 They're not thin at all. What do they look like. 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:11.359 They are four to twenty pounds apiece, they have thick 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:14.919 sodder seams of lead. They're about the size of a 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:18.320 paint can. And Donkan can make six of them per hour. 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:23.200 Technology. I mean, it's not gonna feed the. 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:27.040 World yet, it's gonna get better, right, But Duncan is 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:30.760 already thinking like a marketer. So as soon as he's 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:35.119 got this giant kettle bill filled with meat, he sends 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:38.120 it off to the Duke of Wellington and the Royal family. 0:20:38.600 --> 0:20:40.520 You know, you gotta try this, right. I'm sure that 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:43.160 they don't open them themselves. They have people for this, 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:46.560 but they bring it to the table and they love it. 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:47.320 They love it. 0:20:47.320 --> 0:20:50.560 The Royal family is like, this is perfection, tasty, right. 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.679 So he's got that stamp of approval, gets government contracts 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:54.920 for the British Army, British Navy. 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:56.520 They'll pay anything for this, right. 0:20:56.400 --> 0:21:00.000 Because they're now fighting Napoleon, you know, so setting aside 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:02.560 like the military strategy, you know, you could picture the 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:05.240 Battle of Waterloo. However you picture the Battle of Waterloo, 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:08.600 I picture it as the French eating partridges in gravy 0:21:08.760 --> 0:21:11.679 stored in bottles, and on the British side roast beef 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:14.720 and carrot soup. I never finished the story of our 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.760 French candy maker, Nicholas, a pair legend. He tried to 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:21.399 stay in the canning business. He built a factory in 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:23.960 the town of Massi, outside Paris and France. He was 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:26.800 making a go at marketing the technology. He was even 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:32.639 experimenting with square cans la la I know, easier to stack, 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:34.120 easier to ship. 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:37.080 Aikia I feel like Aikia should be making square cans 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:38.200 flat pack cans. 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:42.040 It has more weak points, I know, but you know, 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:44.480 a pair is like trying to make this happen. But 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:48.320 in eighteen fourteen, his main man, Napoleon, plunged the entire 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:53.680 continent into war. Remember Prussian and Austrian forces destroy his factory. 0:21:54.280 --> 0:21:57.200 Huh karma, You know you help the military and the 0:21:57.240 --> 0:22:00.600 military comes back to bite you. The government let him 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:03.119 rebuild in Paris, gave him money to switch from glass 0:22:03.119 --> 0:22:06.240 bottles to tin. Then the politics change and the government 0:22:06.280 --> 0:22:09.440 evicted him, and he wrote a letter to them. He said, 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:12.159 I gave my life to science and to mankind. You 0:22:12.200 --> 0:22:14.960 are taking away the premises I thought ought to be mine. 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:19.080 Then he passed away in eighteen forty one. He was poor. 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:23.160