Rodolphe Lindt

Rudolf Lindt (16 July 1855 – 20 February 1909), often known by his francized name Rodolphe Lindt, was a Swiss chocolate maker, chocolatier and inventor. He founded the Lindt brand of Swiss chocolate and invented the conching machine^[1] and other processes to improve the quality of chocolate.^[2]

Rodolphe Lindt
Lindt c. 1881
Born	16 July 1855 Bern, Switzerland
Died	20 February 1909(1909-02-20) (aged 53) Bern, Switzerland
Nationality	Swiss
Occupation	Chocolatier
Known for	Founder of Lindt Inventor of conching

Life

Lindt was born on 16 July 1855 in Bern, to pharmacist and politician Johann Rudolf Lindt and his wife Amalia Eugenia Salchli.^[3] Between 1873 and 1875 he did an apprenticeship in Lausanne with the Amédée Kohler & Fils chocolate company,^[4][3] then managed by the sons of Charles-Amédée Kohler. In 1879, he founded his own chocolate factory in the Mattequartier, a section of the Old City of Bern.^[4]

In December 1879, he succeeded in improving the quality of chocolate by the development of the conching machine, a lengthwise stirring device which gives a finer consistency and lets undesired aromas evaporate. He was also among the first chocolate makers to add cocoa butter back into the chocolate mass (although not the very first one).^[5][6] These two innovations contributed greatly to the high quality of Swiss chocolate.^[7]

In 1899, Lindt sold his factory and the secret of conching to the Chocolat Sprüngli AG, who have traded as Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli AG since.^[8] Sprüngli paid 1.5 million Gold francs for the marketing rights and the recipe.

Sources

• Hans Rudolf Schmid (1985), "Lindt, Rudolf", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 14, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 616–617; (full text online)
• Alex Capus: Patriarchen: Zehn Portraits. Albrecht Knaus Verlag, München 2006, ISBN 3-813502-73-2

References

1. Thomas Stephens (13 December 2017). "The pioneers of Switzerland's 'Chocolate Revolution'". Swissinfo. Retrieved 10 April 2021.
2. "Rodolphe Lindt". Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Presence Switzerland. Retrieved February 24, 2013.
3. Hürlimann, Katja. "Lindt, Rudolf". Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (in French). Translated by Elena Vuille-Mondada. Retrieved 10 April 2021.
4. "Rodolphe Lindt, Inventor and Innovator". Lindt & Sprüngli. Retrieved 10 April 2021.
5. Collins, Ross F. (2022). Chocolate: A Cultural Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 113. ISBN 9781440876080. Fry wondered about the possibility of actually returning some of the cocoa butter pressed out by Van Houten's machine to produced something better than the old dry, brittle cake that centuries of consummers had called "chocolate."
6. Cross, Gary S. (2014). Packaged Pleasures: How Technology and Marketing Revolutionized Desire. University of Chicago Press. p. 113. ISBN 9780226147383. Even more important, though, was the invention of the chocolate bar in 1847. Rodolphe Lindt in Switzerland and J. S. Fry in England blended cocoa butter and cocoa powder (from Van Houten's press) with sugar and molded the results into a bar.
7. Chrystal, Paul (2021). Rowntree's – The Early History. Pen and Sword History. p. 40. ISBN 9781526778925. The real break came in 1879 when the eating of chocolate went through the roof, largely due to Roderich [sic] Lindt's invention of 'melting chocolate', enriched by added cocoa butter with an enhanced texture created by extra mechanical conching (smoothing) of the cocoa mass.
8. "170 Years of Lindt & Sprungli - A success story". Retrieved May 7, 2018.