Inventor of Cold Storage,

Horowhenua Chronicle, 23 October 1913, Page 4

Inventor of Cold Storage,

The cable reports on Tuesday record the death of Charles Tellier, widely known of late years as the .inventor of cold storage. If Tellier was not the first to discover the preservative properties of great cold, he was the first to apply the principle, on anything like a commercial scale, to the preservation of meat, and ho may justly be regarded as the father of the frozen meat trade. Chilled beef had already been son! to England from America in the seventies,' when Tollier, in 1877, brought from Buenos Ayres to Rouen the first meat cargo shipped through the Tropics under refrigeration. The little steamer Frigorifique, which had been bought by a French company formed to import fresh meat from La Plata, Texas, or Madagascar, sailed from liouen to the Argentine in 1870,, and returned nearly a year later, after a voyage of 104 days, with the greater part of hoi' cargo in good condition. Some of it reached London. . But the day of frozen moat had not arrived; the public did not want it, the- enterprise resulted in a loss, and the company, lacking sympathy and help from the Government and capitalists, broke up. Tollior turned his attention to other problems, but with poor financial rewards, and he was rediscovered a year or two ago living in groat poverty in two small rooms. Then recognition came to him. His appearance at the first international Congress of Refrigeration in Paris was the signal for an ovation, and when his circumstances became known the Argentine voted him a substantial sum of money which, we believe, was supplemented by others interested in the frozen meat trade. Tellier was a little before his time, but his memory should be honoured as one of the pioneers of an Industry which has transformed Australasia and the Argentine, and has brought affluence to thousands of people.-—Christchurch Evening News. 1