Who invented bottle opener

By this time, opener styles were concentrated in three styles: flat figural, key-shaped and now wire openers. Wire openers were the cheapest and easiest to produce. In , Krueger beer became the first canned beverage. This type of container required a triangular punch be made in the top of the container. The onset of World War II saw major cutbacks in items produced with steel.

Many openers that were made up until this time ended up in war drive scrap steel piles. Once WWII ended, opener production again picked up steam with the main types produced being wire openers and can piercers.

The s were the heyday of can piercers with almost every beverage producing some type of can piercer. Left side: Coca-Cola opener with a ball bat and baseball, ca. Ermal Fraze invented the pop-top beer can in , and by the mids, can piercers were no longer needed. You could open a can without needing an opener device. Bottled beer and soda still required an opener, and wire openers continued to be produced in large quantities. One issue with pop-top cans was that the person could choke on the pop tab if it was dropped into the can.

By the s, a push-tab can developed by Coors solved this problem. By the s, opener production was mainly confined to the major brewery and soda producers. The last 20 years have seen a shift again, and especially the last few years, as micro breweries have opened everywhere across the country. Hundreds of new opener styles have been made, and the number keeps rising. From my very first car to the old truck parked outside in the driveway today, this opener outlasted many vehicles and moved between many different key rings.

After a little scrubbing and a new coat of paint, it will be ready for several more years of reliable service. Introduced in the s, speed openers are the bartender's best friend. The flat bar design of the speed opener is large enough for the busy barkeep to grab quickly, and light-weight and easy to manipulate for popping off bottle caps quickly and efficiently.

The wide slot on the speed opener makes it easy to slip the business end of the opener over the top of the bottle, while the round hole on the opposite end can slide down the neck of a frosty bottle to pull it out of the ice bucket. Vendors looking for marketing opportunities also love the wide, flat speed opener bar that offers lots of space for product logos and catchy slogans.

I like the keychain version. I had to get one myself after a particularly stressful work trip to Los Angeles. In the hotel after a long, hot, stressful day, I had a six pack of beer and no way to open a single one of them! I ended up using a drawer handle, McGyver-style. After that trip, I swore I'd never travel without an opener. That bartender was very skilled! My bottle openers are not really that original but it would be fun to have some special ones to the right occasions.

Meat Dishes. Vegetable Dishes. Green Beans. Ice Cream. Dining Out. Fast Food. Baked Goods. Cooking Equipment. Food Industry. Famous Chefs. Now you can crack a cold one and shock your friends with your newfound historical knowledge!

Altorenna, Anthony. The Barman. Bartender Beer Bottle Openers. Weaver, Ken. Opening Act: Prying into the history of bottle openers. Muzquiz, Albert. Uncapping the History of Bottle Openers.

Stanley, John. Just for Openers from to the present a short history of bottle openers. Venton, Danielle. Meet Gianna - no stranger to all things promo products. Her background in research-based writing, linguistics, and advertising gives her an edge in blogging about the marketing industry.

More articles by Gianna Petan. Shop Now or Search for:. How is a Bottle Opener Made? I inevitably end up opening my frosty beverage on a table or counter like an animal. But bottle caps and the devices with which we open them were both substantive technological advancements, which likewise made bottled beverages more hygienic and condemned millions upon millions of caps and bottles to landfills the world over.

This deceptively simple technology launched an entire industry and thus begins our history of the humble bottle opener. Vintage Opener and bottles. Image via delishably. Of the sources I consulted, one attributes the creation of the bottle opener to an anonymous inventor in That would be exactly years before the creation of the modern bottle cap, which makes this theory feel less than plausible.

The unsung hero of keeping your beer from going flat. Image via All About Beer. The more widely accepted history attributes the invention of both the bottle cap and the openers thereof to the same man: William Painter. Both bottles and stoppers tended to be reusable, which predictably spawned all manner of hygienic issues and because none of the pre-existing stoppers were especially effective, beer could easily be both germ-filled and flat.