Did you ever wonder how people opened cans before there were can openers? While considering that, were you ever curious about who the bright eyed guy or gal was who thought up the idea of cans? Well, wonder no more. Check out some of these facts below. There’s no treasure hidden beneath them, but you may impress most of your friends and probably none of your relatives with this new information. Here’s the scoop for those who dare to read on.
The very first practical can opener (as opposed to the others that came before and were impractical), was developed some fifty years after the birth of the metal can. Canned food was actually invented to serve the British Navy by a man named Peter Durand in 1813. These early cans were made of solid iron and weighted more by themselves than the food they contained (kind of like early luggage before someone thought about making it light-weight). Mr. Durand was guilty of not planning ahead like that old sign with the words plan ahead and the “d” on the next line. He was so proud that he had figured out how to seal food in a can that he forgot to consider a practical way to extract it! The instructions on these early cans read: “Cut round the top near the outer edge with a chisel and hammer.”
Enter Ezra Warner of Waterbury, Connecticut, who in 1858 patented the first can-opener. It looked like a bent bayonet, whose large curved blade pierce the can’s rim and then forcibly worked around its edges. Oddly, customers who bought the cans could never buy this opener; a store clerk opened each can before it was taken home. In 1870, William Lyman invented the modern can opener, which has a cutting wheel that rolls around the rim. In 1925, the Star Can Company introduced a minor change; the serrated rotation wheel. The patent, however, remained unchanged until it became the basis for the first electrical can opener, which was introduced in December of 1931.
It’s been an uphill but very successful climb for the can-opener ever since. Congratulate it the next time you take it out of your kitchen drawer. It certainly deserves some respect.
Happy can opener!
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