Who Invented the Barrel?

Who invented the barrel isn't known for sure but the history of this remarkable object goes back at least to the time of the Ancient Egyptians.

The humble barrel is such a commonplace object that it's easy to take it for granted, but some historians have compared the invention of the barrel to the invention of the wheel. Without barrels to store food and fresh water for hundreds of crew over hundreds of days, long sea voyages by explorers like Captain Cook and Christopher Columbus would simply not have been possible.

Barrels made international trade easier, and have been used for storing liquids, food, oil, gunpowder, nails, coins, and even dead bodies. The British hero Lord Nelson, who was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, was taken back to his home country preserved in a barrel of brandy or rum.

Who invented the barrel?

What's remarkable about the barrel, even more so than the wheel, is that it's been around for about 5,000 years virtually unchanged. The only modern adaptation has been to use metal hoops instead of wooden ones to hold the barrel's staves together.

The earliest depiction of a barrel is on the walls of the tomb of an Egyptian official who lived in about the 3rd millennium BC. Oil is still measured in barrels today, a tradition that started when oil was stored and measured in whiskey barrels during the Pennsylvania oil boom of 1859.

Barrels conquer the world

While we may not know for sure who invented the barrel, we do know that the Romans helped to spread their use. The Romans even turned them into weapons of war, filling them with burning pitch to be fired from giant catapults.

The Creation of Cooperages

According to Pliny the Elder, the first European people to build cooperages were the Gauls. The industry eventually split into "Dry Coopers," making barrels for grains, and "Wet Coopers," who specialized in watertight vessels for liquids. While the ancients didn't yet know that barrels add distinct flavors to spirits, they perfected the craft of making them durable and portable.

Even today, the tradition continues. Used American white oak bourbon barrels are still dismantled and shipped to Scotland for use in the whisky industry, proving the barrel's timeless utility.

by Mike Gerrard

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