Crown Cork Bottle Opener

We take many things for granted but everything had to be invented by someone at some point in the past. Drinking a can of Guinness yesterday gave me pause for thought. Ring pulls stay connected to the can once pulled these days. Not that many years ago the ring pulls came off the cans when pulled and for many years caused loads of unnecessary litter. The Ring Pull was invented as recently as 1959 by Ermal Fraze and didn’t become affixed to the cans until 1990.

Before beer came in cans it came in bottles. Before supermarkets cornered the beer and wine market and we all decided to stay at home in the evenings drinking and not driving there were pubs everywhere. And there used to be a thriving Off-License on every street corner. They did a roaring trade in cigarettes and bottles of beer from the turn of the century until the 1970s as they were the only shops open in the evenings in those days. Bottled beer originally used corks until William Painter’s (1838 -1906) wonderful invention of the bottle cap (and it’s specialised opener). He called this The Crown Cork Bottle Cap and his company in Baltimore USA became The Crown Cork and Seal Company. The beer bottle cap is likely the first really successful disposable product ever invented. If you are careful you can put a cap back on to keep the beer fresh, but it is unlikely to still be a liquid-tight seal. The design works so well on bottles it is still used unchanged today.

I don’t own any valuable family heirlooms but this bottle opener has survived a few generations and has been retired to the back of the cutlery drawer at Magic Robot Towers. It is probably 100 years old and as it has no moving parts it still works! And you can still buy these antiques on eBay for £5 or less. There are loads for sale. Countless millions must have been manufactured.