Rodolphe Lindt

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Rodolphe Lindt (1880)

Rodolphe Lindt , actually Rudolf Lindt , (* July 16, 1855 in Bern ; † February 20, 1909 there ) was a Swiss chocolate manufacturer and inventor. He was the founder of the Lindt chocolate factory and the inventor of the conching machine and other processes to improve chocolate quality.

Life

He was the son of the pharmacist and politician Johann Rudolf Lindt and his wife Amalia Eugenia nee Salchli. From 1873 to 1875 he completed an apprenticeship at the Amédée Kohler & fils chocolate company in Lausanne . In 1879 he founded his own chocolate factory in the Matte district on the Aare in Bern.

In December of the same year he succeeded in improving the chocolate quality, which was still very mediocre at the time, by developing the conching machine , a longitudinal agitator to refine the consistency and to evaporate unwanted aromas . He was also the first to add cocoa butter to the chocolate mass. These two innovations made a significant contribution to the high quality of Swiss chocolate .

In 1899, Lindt sold its factory and the “secret” of conching to Chocolat Sprüngli AG , which has since operated under the name Lindt & Sprüngli AG . Sprüngli had to pay 1.5 million gold francs for the trademark rights and the Lindt recipes . Lindt managed the “Bern branch” of Lindt & Sprüngli until 1905, four years before his death.

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