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| Peter Durand | |
|---|---|
| Name | Peter Durand |
| Birth date | c. 1766 |
| Birth place | * Possibly Shrewsbury * England |
| Death date | 10 April 1822 |
| Death place | London |
| Known for | Patent for tin canister preservation |
| Occupation | Merchant, inventor (patentee) |
Peter Durand
Peter Durand was an 18th–19th century British merchant and patentee noted for securing the first recorded patent for preserved food in tin canisters. His 1810 patent influenced developments in food preservation and maritime provisioning, connecting to technological, industrial and imperial networks across Britain, France, the United States, and colonial ports. Durand's patent catalyzed later entrepreneurs, manufacturers, and naval suppliers associated with the Industrial Revolution, the Royal Navy, and global trade.
Durand was born circa 1766, reportedly in or near Shrewsbury, and operated as a merchant in London during a period shaped by the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, and expanding British commercial enterprises. He appears in contemporary directories alongside merchants and patentees who collaborated with firms in Birmingham, Bristol, and Liverpool, cities entwined with the Industrial Revolution, the Abolition movement, and transatlantic commerce involving ports such as Boston and New York City. Durand’s milieu overlapped with inventors and industrialists including James Watt, Matthew Boulton, and patentees linked to the Board of Longitude and the Royal Society, institutions that fostered technological exchange in the late 18th century.
On 25 August 1810 Durand received British Patent No. 3392 for preserving food in containers made of tinplate or other metals. The patent described sealing provisions in metallic canisters to prevent putrefaction, an idea previously explored by Nicolas Appert in France and by manufacturers in Paris and Calais. Durand’s specification permitted the use of tinplate manufactured in Sheffield and processed in workshops similar to those used by metalworkers associated with Birmingham firms and tinplate operations in Wales and the Black Country. Durand’s document circulated among contemporaries such as Bryan Donkin, John Hall, and Thomas Kensett (note: Kensett later active in the United States), and it was cited in later patents and commercial ventures by figures linked to Canning Town industry and British suppliers to the Royal Navy. The patent bridged Appertian vacuum-preservation techniques with metallurgical advances tied to the Corn Laws era raw-material flows and the metallurgical innovations promoted by societies like the Institution of Civil Engineers.
Following the patent, Durand engaged with London-based merchants and agents involved in provisioning vessels and military expeditions, networks that connected to East India Company victualling, victualling yards at Deptford, and contractors supplying the Royal Navy and the British Army. The patent was sold or assigned to other operators who commercialized tin canning on an industrial scale, including associates who worked with Bryan Donkin and industrialists in Finsbury. Some of Durand’s business correspondents overlapped with traders active in St. Petersburg and Lisbon, reflecting mercantile links to Mediterranean provisioning and Baltic imports of iron. Entrepreneurs in the United States such as Robert Foulis and later Thomas Kensett built on Durand’s legal protection to establish canning enterprises in New York City and other Atlantic ports. Durand’s own later records indicate continued mercantile activity in London until his death, while the technology proliferated among commercial firms and municipal suppliers in Liverpool, Bristol, and overseas colonial capitals.
Durand’s patent was seminal in the rise of the canned-food industry, influencing the provisioning of long-distance voyages by the Royal Navy, merchant vessels of the British East India Company, and polar expeditions later associated with figures like James Clark Ross and John Franklin. The technology underpinned logistical transformations in nineteenth-century exploration, colonial administration, and military campaigns such as those around the Crimean War. Durand’s legal framework enabled inventors and industrialists—linked to Bryan Donkin, Gustavus Swift-era refrigeration innovators in the United States, and canning factories in France and Germany—to adapt metallurgical and thermal processes. Historians of technology connect Durand’s patent to later developments within institutions such as the Royal Society of Arts and municipal health reforms driven by commissioners in London and provincial capitals. The commercial diffusion of tin canning reshaped food supply chains for urbanizing populations in Manchester and Birmingham and influenced industrial packaging industries rooted in Sheffield metallurgy and Birmingham manufacturing clusters.
Durand’s private life is sparsely documented in surviving trade directories and legal archives housed in collections associated with the National Archives (United Kingdom) and repositories in London and Shropshire. He died on 10 April 1822 in London, after a career that intersected with patentees, industrialists, and maritime suppliers such as the Admiralty victualling establishment. Durand’s modest obituary and probate entries referenced mercantile assets and assignments of his patent rights to successors active in canning enterprises across the United Kingdom and the United States.
Category:British inventors Category:1766 births Category:1822 deaths