COLD STORAGE & ITS INVENTOR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 10713, 31 December 1912, Page 3

COLD STORAGE & ITS INVENTOR.

M. Charles Tellier',' the French*.savant, inventor of cold storage, and the • first to send a steamer through the tropics, as far back as 1876, with a temperature of frost in her hull, has been living in very reduced! circumstances, and the . International Oold Storage Association, on hearing of his unfortunate condition, has opened, a public subscription on his behalf. The Government of Argentine a short time ago contributed to it a. suiir of £IOOO,. and till at of Uruguay is supplementing this by an amount- of £4OO. No doubt other countries which have benefited by 'his discoveries will do likewise. M. Tellier is now 84 years of age. He spent his whole, fortune in the pursuit of his numerous discoveries. He originated the whole science; of cold storage. Before he was thirty years of age he begun his researches, and ,succeeded in devising a practical process of freezing, which was applied in tlie'first place to the preservation of beer. He wrote two works, entitled respectively "La Froid Applique a la Biere" and "La. Conservatoire de la Yinande par le Froid, . in which he lavs, the scientific founda- ; tions of the whole cold storage edifice, i He wais not only a theorist, but ieduced his inventions to practice, and turned his laboratory at Auteuil, near , Paris into a veritable cold storage factory. His history resembles that 1 of too many geniuses, who prove the ; l tmth of the dictum that no man' is a prophet in his own country. His wihole life was devoted to science and' to the practical utilisation of artificial cold the commercial \ importance of which' I he seems to have been alone in pel- j j ceiving for more than 30 years. | i Wlial«t still young, he foiuid -a- method of freezing by two ; new chemica lii —methylic ether and . trimethylamine. This process ia fully ..elaborated in the books above mentioned. In 1873 t-lw? French Academy of Science adopted a eulogistic report on his labours, but Ave do not hear of any more practical help given to Ms. efforts. As usual, it was a conspicuous .illustration of the fact that i it is the individunl and not the mob to which the world owes its most substantial benefits. In 1870 Tellier had a small vessel,' appro])riately called the Frigorifiqne, especially fitted for cold storage, which was to have a temperature below tlie freezing point, even under the equator. In the following year the ship'sailed from Ro<uen on her first trip to the Riv-er Plate with a small quaniit-v of fresh meat, which was delivered in excellent condition after a vov- 0 -w of a hundred dnvs. Three months later the same to.cic.-q] returned, to Rouen w~ith a South American moat- cargo, and'the practical success of the ,cold. wtonago bnsinpss was then a>ssUired. Tlie process, was immediately applied to fisli- ; in g boa to off Morocco and along the ' French coast, ; and gradually it has j been applied to the enormous business | which is now earned on on every jocean.