Hello @thescientist, and many thanks for offering this community a glimpse of your lab processes! I'm daily growing more aware of another relevant Steemit dimension: it incentivates the encyclopedism, in each of us :-)
Ah, would you have data about the "French" adjective?: is it related to a French patent, a region, a research institute, the fact that this device was (or is) commonly used in France...?
it appears Dr. CS French wrote the first paper on the topic in 1955...
"French, C. S., & Milner, H. W. (1955). [9] Disintegration of bacteria and small particles by high-pressure extrusion. Methods in enzymology, 1, 64-67."