Did the tin can really come decades before the can opener?

Yes. Peter Durand patented the tin can in 1810, and the first can openers were not patented until 1855 in England and 1858 in the United States. That is a gap of roughly forty-five to fifty years. Sources describe the gap in slightly different ways, from 'almost fifty years' to 'around 30 years', depending on what they count as the starting point. [1] [2] [3]

Napoleon offered a prize in 1795 for a way to preserve army food. Nicolas Appert won it with glass jars, not metal cans. Durand then received a patent for preserving food in tin cans in 1810. Bryan Donkin acquired that patent in 1812 and set up the first canning factory in London in 1813. The Wikipedia entry also notes that the Dutch Navy used food preserved in tin cans from at least 1772, so tinned food has an earlier history than Durand's patent. [2] [1] [4]

Early cans were made of wrought iron lined with tin and could be as thick as 3/16 of an inch. They were heavy enough to outweigh their contents. The instruction printed on them read to cut round the top near the outer edge with a chisel and hammer, so a hammer and chisel was the manufacturer's own suggested method. Soldiers and sailors, the main users, also had plenty of sharp tools, such as bayonets. [5] [1] [3]

Cost mattered too. Canning was expensive, so for decades cans went almost exclusively to the army and navy. Production was slow, about six cans per hour at first and sixty per hour in the 1840s. Wikipedia suggests the delay reflects the usefulness of existing tools weighed against the cost and effort of developing a new one. [4] [2] [1]

Robert Yeates, a cutlery and surgical instrument maker in Middlesex, devised a claw-ended opener in 1855. Ezra J. Warner of Waterbury, Connecticut, patented the first US opener on January 5, 1858. It had a blade pushed into the lid, a guard to limit penetration, and a sickle that sawed around the edge, leaving a jagged rim. By then thinner steel cans were starting to replace iron ones. The Union Army used it in the Civil War, and grocery clerks opened cans for customers with it, though it was considered too dangerous for home use. [1] [5]

William Lyman's 1870 patent introduced a rotating cutting wheel, but it was hard for ordinary consumers to use. A 1925 design added a second, serrated wheel to grip the rim, giving the familiar form still common today. Smithsonian credits that design to Charles Arthur Bunker. [1] [2]