CANNED AND SEALED

On April 02, 2008 in General

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Image via WikipediaIn 1810, Peter Durand (also known as Pierre Durand) was granted a patent by King George III of England for his idea of preserving food in “vessels of glass, pottery, tin, or other metals or fit materials.” Durand’s patent was based on 15 years of experimentation by a Frenchman, Nicolas François Appert, who developed the idea of preserving food in bottles. Durand took Appert’s idea one step further and replaced the breakable glass bottles with cylindrical tinplate canisters. Durand did not actually can foods himself but sold his patent to two other Englishmen, Bryan Donkin and John Hall, who set up a commercial canning factory and by 1813 were producing their first canned goods for the British army and navy. This is a wonderful illustration of invention by one, subsequent assignment of the invention to another, and then selling it to those capable of manufacturing and selling products resulting therefrom.

The first cans were made of solid iron, and usually weighed more than the food they held! This was largely due to an incredible oversight on part of the inventors and manufacturers (and also, in the authors’ view, reminiscent of times when customer-centricity was not a great focus of industries). Though they figured out how to seal food into cans, they gave little thought to how to get it out again. The instructions that came with the product read: “Cut round the top near the outer edge with a chisel and hammer.” Only when thinner steel cans came into use in the 1860s could the can opener be invented. But it must be noted here that such thinner cans had been anticipated by the original invention, as the claims were broad that included “fit materials” with no mention of thickness.

The first can-opener (patented in 1858), devised by Ezra Warner of Waterbury, Connecticut, looked like a bent bayonet. Its large curved blade was driven into a can’s rim, then forcibly worked around its edge. Interestingly, this first type of can opener never left the grocery store. A clerk had to open each can before it was taken away, for it was deemed too dangerous for domestic use!

The first practical can opener was developed shortly thereafter. The modern can opener, with a cutting wheel that rolls around the rim, was invented by William Lyman of the United States in 1870. The only change from the original patent was the introduction of a serrated rotation wheel by the Star Can Company of San Francisco in 1925. The basic principle continues to be used on the modern can openers, and it was the basis of the first electric can opener, introduced in December 1931.

Then, in 1962, Ermal Cleon Fraze of Ohio invented the similar integral rivet and pull-tab version (also known as rimple or ring pull), which had a ring attached at the rivet for pulling, and which would come off completely to be discarded. He received U.S. Patent No. 3,349,949 for his pull-top can design in 1963 and licensed his invention to Alcoa and Pittsburgh Brewing Company. It was first introduced on Iron beer cans by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company.

Due to inherent disadvantages and dangers involved in these pull-tab cans (such as some users dropped the aluminium tab into the can and occasionally swallowed the sharp-edged tab by accident), stay tabs (also called colon tabs) were invented by Daniel F. Cudzik of Reynolds Metals in Richmond, Virginia in 1975, partly to prevent the injuries caused by removable tabs. In this can model described in U.S. Patent No. 3,967,752, the lid contains a scored region and a pull-tab that can be leveraged to open the hole by pushing the scored region into the can.

One unsuccessful variation was the press-button can, which featured two pre-cut buttons, one large, one small, in the top of the can, sealed with a plastic membrane. These buttons were held closed by the outward pressure of the carbonated beverage. To open the can, the consumer would press both buttons into the body of the can, thus opening one through which to drink the beverage, the other to provide sufficient air to allow the contents to flow more easily. The buttons would remain attached to the can, alleviating the earlier issues with pull-tab ingestion. A disadvantage of this method was that a consumer could open a press button can and either remove, replace or taint its contents, before shaking the can enough to force the press buttons to re-seal the can, with little evidence of tampering. Another disadvantage was that it was too easy for consumers either to cut themselves on the sharp edge of either hole or get fingers stuck inside the can whilst pressing the buttons to open it.

Thanks to these innovations and inventions, all of us now can enjoy our favourite beverage from aluminium cans which can be opened in a facile manner without the use of ungainly devices, and generally not maiming oneself in the process.

The authors, in their eternal quest for knowledge, would like to obtain patent numbers (and the actual patents as images, if possible) of all the original patents involving the cans and can openers designed and invented by Peter Durand, Ezra Warner and William Lyman.

http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/canopener.htm
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/canopener.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/http://inventors.about.com/
http://inventors.about.com/

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