Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey thereon
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? So? Longtime Tech Stuff listeners know that I
Speaker 1: like to mix it up a bit on this show.
Speaker 1: I have some episodes that focus on things like bleeding
Speaker 1: edge technologies, you know, like quantum computing, and then I
Speaker 1: do others that look back to much less complicated and
Speaker 1: certainly less whibbly wobbly advancements in tech. And today we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about one of the examples in that second category,
Speaker 1: because I wanted to chat about can openers. Now, first off,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance you've heard what is arguably one
Speaker 1: of the most interesting facts about can opener, namely that
Speaker 1: it took nearly fifty years from the invention of the
Speaker 1: ten can to the invention of the ten can opener,
Speaker 1: which for me brings to mind this image of a
Speaker 1: very hungry person buried in a pile of cans saying, okay,
Speaker 1: now what But let's turn the clock back to the
Speaker 1: late eighteenth century and talk about what precipitated the invention
Speaker 1: of the ten can In the first place, it was war.
Speaker 1: More specifically, it was the tail end of the French
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Wars, and those, of course would then transition into
Speaker 1: the Napoleonic Wars. So you know, that way, it was
Speaker 1: just convenient to go from war to war. And very
Speaker 1: often in the descriptions of can Openers and their history,
Speaker 1: Napoleon Bonaparte gets thrown into the story. I do not
Speaker 1: know how accurate it is to say that Napoleon Bonaparte
Speaker 1: was instrumental in this. He may very well have been,
Speaker 1: but the timing is a little iffy. So the timing
Speaker 1: is typically set around seventeen ninety five. So I will
Speaker 1: get to why Napoleon may or may not have been
Speaker 1: involved in this particular part of the story. But the
Speaker 1: basis of this problem was getting fresh or at least
Speaker 1: unspoiled food to soldiers who were out in the field.
Speaker 1: One of the challenges that armies faced was that, you know,
Speaker 1: you got to feed all those folks who are fighting
Speaker 1: on your side, or else they don't fight so good
Speaker 1: no more. And the darnedest thing was that sometimes you
Speaker 1: could win a battle in a region and you could
Speaker 1: actually take territory, but the people in that region just
Speaker 1: seemed reluctant to sell or share food with you for
Speaker 1: some reason, just because you had been shooting all their
Speaker 1: neighbors and relatives. So it was really the height of rudeness.
Speaker 1: And this meant that you had to depend upon your
Speaker 1: own supply lines to bring food from much further back
Speaker 1: up to the front, and then you would be able
Speaker 1: to provide supplies to your troops. But obviously these supply
Speaker 1: lines had lots of challenges right. For one thing, they
Speaker 1: were a really attractive target. If you could disrupt your
Speaker 1: enemy's supply lines, you could starve out their forces, and
Speaker 1: that meant that you were much more likely to secure
Speaker 1: a victory. Those good chances that they were going to surrender,
Speaker 1: because otherwise they would be starving to death. But even
Speaker 1: if you weren't able to disrupt the supply lines directly,
Speaker 1: if the lines are extended far enough, then they're going
Speaker 1: to encounter problems of their own, whether those are problems
Speaker 1: because of weather or terrain, or just the distances they
Speaker 1: have to travel. Often, by the time the supplies got
Speaker 1: to the front, the food was spoiled. It could even
Speaker 1: be to the point of being inedible or even dangerous.
Speaker 1: To eat. Now, you may have heard the phrase an
Speaker 1: army marches on its stomach. If you cannot feed your soldiers,
Speaker 1: you're going to have a real rough go of it.
Speaker 1: And so the French army offered a reward of twelve
Speaker 1: thousand francs. If it hadn't been for the French Revolution,
Speaker 1: it would have been a princely sum, but the royalty
Speaker 1: had found themselves about a head shorter at this point. Anyway,
Speaker 1: twelve thousand francs would go a really long way. And
Speaker 1: obviously this was so that innovators would be incentivized to
Speaker 1: come up with better ways to preserve food. This strategy
Speaker 1: of offering a sizable reward in return for innovation would
Speaker 1: become a tried and true methodology from that point forward.
Speaker 1: In fact, you could argue DARPA, the US Defense Advanced
Speaker 1: Research Projects Agency, does the same sort of thing, you know,
Speaker 1: with things like their Grand Challenges or the ex Prize. Right,
Speaker 1: you end up setting a very tough challenge that we
Speaker 1: need to solve, and you attach a hefty prize to it,
Speaker 1: and then next thing you know, you got a bunch
Speaker 1: of smarty pants all over the place trying to be
Speaker 1: the first to do that Now, most accounts say that
Speaker 1: whomever issued the offer did so around seventeen ninety five.
Speaker 1: And again this is why I say Napoleon may or
Speaker 1: may not have been the dude who did this. In
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety five, Napoleon was actually still rising through the
Speaker 1: ranks of the French military. He did become the commander
Speaker 1: of the Army of the Interior in seventeen ninety five.
Speaker 1: In late seventeen ninety five, so presumably he could have
Speaker 1: been in charge of making this proclamation, but he was
Speaker 1: not in command of all of France. He had not
Speaker 1: become the Emperor Bonaparte at this point. So whether he
Speaker 1: was directly responsible for issuing this order or that maybe
Speaker 1: it was some other commander or group of commanders, I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely sure. But it's close enough where I guess
Speaker 1: you could say Bonaparte made the announcement and you know,
Speaker 1: it's close. It could very well be true, and maybe
Speaker 1: there's even documentation somewhere that really proves it. But as
Speaker 1: I was going through, it was like a lot of
Speaker 1: people making the assertion but not pointing to any actual
Speaker 1: like incident where it was documented proof. It was just okay,
Speaker 1: there was a twelve thousand franc reward announced that much
Speaker 1: seems to be true, and maybe Napoleon Bonaparte was the
Speaker 1: person who said it, but you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: fun to say, Napoleon Bonaparte's the reason why we have
Speaker 1: can openers, even though it's a long journey from there.
Speaker 1: Whomever it was who did announce the reward obviously inspired
Speaker 1: a ton of folks to get to work to try
Speaker 1: and suss out a way to preserve food better so
Speaker 1: that it could survive the long journey through a supply line.
Speaker 1: And one of those people was a guy named Nicholas
Speaker 1: Francois Appear. Spoiler alert, no pun intended, we're talking about
Speaker 1: food spoilage. He also has nothing to do with can
Speaker 1: openers directly. Nicholas Appear did not invent the can opener,
Speaker 1: but he does have something to do with the process
Speaker 1: of canning. Now. At Paar was not an engineer. He
Speaker 1: was not an inventor, at least not the technological kind
Speaker 1: of inventor. He was a chef and a distiller of alcohol,
Speaker 1: and he was also a confectioner, a candy maker, kind
Speaker 1: of the Willy Wonka of his time. He was inspired
Speaker 1: by this offer of a reward, and through that inspiration
Speaker 1: he indulged in a lot of experimentation that ultimately would
Speaker 1: lead to the process of canning not cans, not ten cans,
Speaker 1: but the process of canning food in order to preserve it.
Speaker 1: And that process involves heat treating the food and the
Speaker 1: container and thus sterilizing the container and then sealing it
Speaker 1: and keeping that seal nice and intact, and that this
Speaker 1: would keep food fresh indefinitely. A Pair used glass jars,
Speaker 1: and he would seal the glass jars with corks and
Speaker 1: hold those corks in place with a wire, so he would,
Speaker 1: you know, wrap wire around the container to hold the
Speaker 1: sealed shut. He would also use sealing wax to help
Speaker 1: keep the seal intact, and he would place the sealed
Speaker 1: containers in a bath of boiling water. Typically he would
Speaker 1: cover the jars in canvas first to protect them so
Speaker 1: that they wouldn't chatter. And he experimented for more than
Speaker 1: a decade. In fact, it was around fourteen years of
Speaker 1: trying different things before he found a process that he
Speaker 1: could replicate pretty consistently. And one interesting thing about a
Speaker 1: Pair is that his method worked, but he didn't know
Speaker 1: why it worked. It was weird that he had found
Speaker 1: a way that actually seemed to preserve food effectively, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't sure what the mechanism was. Why did this
Speaker 1: specific process result in food that would stay fresh longer?
Speaker 1: He thought maybe it had something to do with forcing
Speaker 1: air out of the container. He was thinking that, you know,
Speaker 1: wine makers often would do the same thing, that when
Speaker 1: they would bottle wine, they would put the wine bottle
Speaker 1: in a boiling bath in order to force air out
Speaker 1: before quirking it, and that this would prevent the wine
Speaker 1: from going bad if you were storing it for any
Speaker 1: length of time and not you know, just drinking it
Speaker 1: up right away. So he thought, well, maybe the same
Speaker 1: thing is true for food. Maybe it's just the air
Speaker 1: that somehow the air has some sort of corruptible element
Speaker 1: to it. Through his experiments, he figured out that the
Speaker 1: two things that mattered the most, at least that appeared
Speaker 1: to matter the most out of the entire process, was
Speaker 1: that it was important to try and keep the food
Speaker 1: out of contact with quote unquote the exterior air, and
Speaker 1: that the hot water bath was absolutely essential. That if
Speaker 1: you did not put the container in a hot water bath,
Speaker 1: the food would still spoil inside the jar, He still
Speaker 1: wasn't sure why this was the case. That was a
Speaker 1: bit of a pickle. Actually, many methods of pickling involved
Speaker 1: this process. No, it was a pickle because part of
Speaker 1: the requirement for being able to claim those twelve thousand
Speaker 1: francs was that whoever came up with the method needed
Speaker 1: to be able to explain their methodology and actually publish
Speaker 1: it so that everyone could benefit from the discovery. But
Speaker 1: it's very hard to describe why something works when you
Speaker 1: don't understand it yourself. So at Pair did his best,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen ten he published his findings in a
Speaker 1: work that was titled The Art of Preserving All Kinds
Speaker 1: of Animal and Vegetable Substances for many years catchy title. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: while his work described the process and that process was effective,
Speaker 1: it actually missed out on what made it effective. In fact,
Speaker 1: it would be several decades before Louis Pasteur would make
Speaker 1: the discoveries of his own that would explain why canning
Speaker 1: was effective. Pasteur explained that micro organisms were responsible for
Speaker 1: things like spoilage. In fact, he identified that different microbes
Speaker 1: were involved in different fermentation processes. He said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it's not just one thing, it's different organisms that do
Speaker 1: these different processes. That's why all this stuff works. He
Speaker 1: also discovered that if you were to heat up, say
Speaker 1: foods or liquids to around one hundred twenty to one
Speaker 1: hundred forty degrees fahrenheit or between fifty to sixty degrees celsius,
Speaker 1: it would kill the microbes and it would stop the
Speaker 1: spoiling or the fermenting process. And if you were to seal,
Speaker 1: like hermetically seal the material away from the outside world,
Speaker 1: assuming the seal was good, then the food or liquid
Speaker 1: inside should be good for a very long time. And
Speaker 1: now we call this process pasturization. But old appair this
Speaker 1: was like half a century earlier. It was before Pastor
Speaker 1: had done any of this work. He had no way
Speaker 1: of knowing that what he was doing in his canning
Speaker 1: process was he was killing off these tiny little critters,
Speaker 1: in fact, critters so small they couldn't be seen with
Speaker 1: the naked eye, and thus preventing them from spoiling the
Speaker 1: food that was stored inside these jars. But the important
Speaker 1: thing was it worked. But he was using jars, he
Speaker 1: was not using ten cans. He received the reward of
Speaker 1: twelve thousand francs and he used it to establish a cannery,
Speaker 1: and in fact that business would remain in operation until
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties. It lasted a more than a century,
Speaker 1: but his part of our story effectively ends here. Now.
Speaker 1: A Pair's process was useful, but his choice of container
Speaker 1: left a little bit to be desired because his glass
Speaker 1: jars are breakable, and what was really needed, especially for
Speaker 1: the purposes of transporting military supplies, was a container that
Speaker 1: would be more resilient, you know, the bumps and knocks
Speaker 1: of travel. Enter the English merchant Peter Durand. So while
Speaker 1: at Pair was getting ready to receive a big old
Speaker 1: pile of francs over in France, Durand was awaiting the
Speaker 1: award of a patent. He had come up with this
Speaker 1: idea to store food in various containers, essentially using a
Speaker 1: Pair's process. But he was thinking that the containers could
Speaker 1: not just be something like a jar or pottery. It
Speaker 1: could actually be made out of metal cans that were
Speaker 1: primarily made out of iron but then coated in a
Speaker 1: thin layer of tin. Durand's patent included the basic process
Speaker 1: of canning, that whatever you wanted to preserve need to
Speaker 1: be put into a container that the container needed to
Speaker 1: be partly but not entirely sealed, an important distinction, and
Speaker 1: then the can and its contents need to be heated up,
Speaker 1: either in an oven or you know, preferably in a
Speaker 1: boiling water bath. He was a little loosey goosey on
Speaker 1: details like how long you needed to heat up the container.
Speaker 1: He would argue that it depended upon the size of
Speaker 1: the container and what you had inside of it. He
Speaker 1: also was lucy goosey on how hot it needed to be,
Speaker 1: but he did say that after this heating process, then
Speaker 1: it needed to be sealed air tight, and it made
Speaker 1: sense that you didn't want to have it sealed before
Speaker 1: he started the heating process, because obviously, if you seal
Speaker 1: the container shut and then you start heating it up
Speaker 1: really hot, you're gonna have pressure building up inside that
Speaker 1: container and next thing you know, you've got yourself a
Speaker 1: boom or a shatter on your hands. So that was
Speaker 1: an important part of it. Now Durand had experimented with
Speaker 1: this process, because the story goes he had heard of
Speaker 1: out the app pair's approach through a colleague of his
Speaker 1: who came from France, and so he hears about this
Speaker 1: process and he's very skeptical at first, so he starts
Speaker 1: to experiment with it himself and he finds that it
Speaker 1: seems to work. So then he tries to get some
Speaker 1: backing from the Royal Societies of the UK, where you
Speaker 1: had these groups of very learned people who were part
Speaker 1: of organizations that we would fund scientific discoveries and scientific advancements.
Speaker 1: So he caned some food. He puts some food inside
Speaker 1: iron cans coated in tin, and he uses the canning
Speaker 1: process to sterilize the cans and the food and then
Speaker 1: to seal it away. And then he has a collection
Speaker 1: of these cans loaded onto a navy vessel that then
Speaker 1: goes off on a voyage of some sort and it's
Speaker 1: gone for like half a year. It does its shippy
Speaker 1: ship stuff and it sails around and then comes back eventually,
Speaker 1: and then Durand and some folks from the Royal Society
Speaker 1: end up going in and they get the ten cans,
Speaker 1: they hack them open and they find that yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: half a year later, the food that was stored inside
Speaker 1: those cans is still good. It's still edible, it's unspoiled.
Speaker 1: So Durand gets his patent in eighteen ten, same time
Speaker 1: that a pair is getting his reward from France. And
Speaker 1: this is when we say that food in ten cans originates.
Speaker 1: It's in eighteen ten. Effectively, Durand sold his patent to
Speaker 1: some businessmen. He did not go into business for himself
Speaker 1: to become a canner. Instead he sells it to a
Speaker 1: couple of entrepreneurs who looked to turn this process into
Speaker 1: a profitable business. Now they were already familiar with the
Speaker 1: process of ten So tenning is when you actually apply
Speaker 1: a very thin coating of tin to some other material,
Speaker 1: typically iron or steel. So the iron or steel provides
Speaker 1: durability and strength, right, it's a very strong metal, But
Speaker 1: the problem is these metals are prone to corrosion, to rusting.
Speaker 1: Tin is not nearly as strong as iron or steel,
Speaker 1: but it also is resistant to corrosion. So by applying
Speaker 1: a thin layer of tin to an iron or steel surface,
Speaker 1: you can benefit from the strength of the underlying material
Speaker 1: while protecting against rust and with the corrosive nature of
Speaker 1: some foods. Like some foods are really acidic, for example,
Speaker 1: or really salty, a coating of tin is absolutely necessary
Speaker 1: to protect the material from actually eating through the can itself,
Speaker 1: like to cause corrosion. The whole point of the can
Speaker 1: was to keep food preserved and safe to eat. It
Speaker 1: would hardly be safe if the food actually ate the can.
Speaker 1: But these early cans, as you might imagine, were really
Speaker 1: thick and heavy and hard to get into, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're talking about cans made out of iron and then
Speaker 1: coated in ten and often these early ones were made,
Speaker 1: you know, by hand. There was not like a process,
Speaker 1: a mechanical process to make the cans that was really
Speaker 1: easy to repeat. But they were effective. They could keep
Speaker 1: food safe inside, and the food wasn't just safe from spoilage,
Speaker 1: it was largely safe from being eaten because getting to
Speaker 1: the food was really hard. The general approach to getting
Speaker 1: into one of these cans was to bust out a
Speaker 1: hammer and chisel and you just go to town on
Speaker 1: the top of that can in an effort to get
Speaker 1: into the food inside. Like there was no can opener,
Speaker 1: there was no pull tab. There was nothing that you
Speaker 1: could use to open these cans apart from tools at
Speaker 1: your disposal to cut in, pierce the lid, pry it
Speaker 1: off and hopefully not spill all the food in the process.
Speaker 1: The canning process in general and the use of ten
Speaker 1: cans in particular slowly spread throughout the UK and Europe,
Speaker 1: and a few years later, like around eighteen eighteen or so,
Speaker 1: it reached America. The first American patent for ten cans
Speaker 1: goes out in eighteen twenty five. It was awarded to
Speaker 1: an Englishman named Thomas Kinnett, who had built his own
Speaker 1: canning business back in Old Blightie and decided that he
Speaker 1: wanted to expand over to the New World as well. Now,
Speaker 1: despite the spread of the practice of canning itself, the
Speaker 1: proliferation of ten cans actually moved fairly slowly. Complicating matters
Speaker 1: was that it would take time for engineers to develop
Speaker 1: methods to mass produce cans. So in the early days
Speaker 1: of producing tenned cans, the methods in employment would allow
Speaker 1: for about six cans to be produced in an hour
Speaker 1: at a single station. Six cans in an hour is
Speaker 1: not very much. You can't mass produce at that speed.
Speaker 1: A man named Henry Evans would end up creating a
Speaker 1: way to make cans at much faster speeds using a die.
Speaker 1: This was not the same Henry Evans that McCauley culkin
Speaker 1: would play in the film The Good Son, though, if
Speaker 1: you are not careful with your search terms. When you're
Speaker 1: searching for research about this person, you're going to end
Speaker 1: up with a lot of villain wikis about the fictional
Speaker 1: character Henry Evans from The Good Son. I know because
Speaker 1: I kept wondering why McCauley Culkin was popping up while
Speaker 1: I was trying to search the history of tend can manufacturing.
Speaker 1: Though the actual historical Henry Evans was active in the
Speaker 1: eighteen forties and he used a dye to significantly speed
Speaker 1: up tin can production. Now, a die is a tool
Speaker 1: in machinery that allows to form or cut metal into
Speaker 1: a specific shape. And there are lots of different kinds
Speaker 1: of dyes. Like some dies are a piece of metal
Speaker 1: that has a very small hole cut into it, and
Speaker 1: you draw other metal through this hole in order to
Speaker 1: form wire, for example. That's the type of die. There
Speaker 1: are casting dies. These dyes are used to create molds, right,
Speaker 1: So this is like a form that you have and
Speaker 1: then you create a mold around that form. Then you
Speaker 1: use that mold to cast copies of the die's shape
Speaker 1: to make whatever you know, component you're trying to make.
Speaker 1: And then there was a third type of die still
Speaker 1: is a third type of die called stamping dyes, and
Speaker 1: these are used with a mechanical press and you stamp
Speaker 1: material into a specific shape. So the de that Henry
Speaker 1: Evans made to produce ten cans was of this last type.
Speaker 1: It was a stamping dye, and thus, using a pressing
Speaker 1: machine and the right dye and the right material, a
Speaker 1: worker could make a brand new tin can with one
Speaker 1: operation of this press. So what had started out as
Speaker 1: a six cans per hour job per station now became
Speaker 1: sixty per hour using a single machine, and a manufacturing
Speaker 1: facility might have several of these presses, so it became
Speaker 1: possible to produce cans on a much larger scale. We're
Speaker 1: still not in like the modern era of mass manufacture,
Speaker 1: but it now became more of a practical technology. Right
Speaker 1: like before, if you were only able to produce six
Speaker 1: cans in an hour per station, you're probably not producing
Speaker 1: enough to make a huge difference, Like you'd be dedicating
Speaker 1: your work to probably a very specific purpose such as
Speaker 1: canning foods for the military, but not for the average person.
Speaker 1: Now you were able to do this at a bigger scale.
Speaker 1: It was starting to open up more opportunities. Around that
Speaker 1: same time, another inventor named Alan Taylor patented a machine
Speaker 1: that could produce cylindrical can ends, so like the top
Speaker 1: and bottom of the cans. So you had Evans method
Speaker 1: that produced the body of the ten can, and you
Speaker 1: had Taylor's method that would produce the ends of the can.
Speaker 1: We were really in business now, even though we still
Speaker 1: didn't have an actual can opener. Another big development happened
Speaker 1: in the mid eighteen fifties when Henry Besmer discovered how
Speaker 1: to process cast iron into steel, so steel would become
Speaker 1: the preferred method to provide the stability for tin cans
Speaker 1: rather than iron, and you could use a whole lot
Speaker 1: less steel to provide that same level of stability, and
Speaker 1: thus you could significantly reduce the weight and the thickness
Speaker 1: of the cans, which would make them much more practical
Speaker 1: for common use. Further down the line, now we're right
Speaker 1: on the verge of it. It was an eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: eight that's when we get our hero at least as
Speaker 1: far as can openers goes, because from eighteen ten to
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty eight, for nearly fifty years, we had this
Speaker 1: approach to preserving food in ten plated iron cans. But
Speaker 1: we did not have a dedicated means of opening the
Speaker 1: cans apart from brute force and a hammer and chisel.
Speaker 1: But in eighteen fifty eight we get the brilliant Ezra J.
Speaker 1: Warner from the United States with a patent on a
Speaker 1: device that would serve as the first dedicated can opener.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you more about that can opener in just
Speaker 1: a moment, but we're going to take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsors. Okay, before the break, I mentioned
Speaker 1: that in eighteen fifty eight, ezra J. Warner gets a
Speaker 1: patent for a dedicated can opener. It did not look
Speaker 1: like the type of can opener that you typically use today,
Speaker 1: the kind that has the handles and the little the
Speaker 1: twisty key like device and you put it at the
Speaker 1: top of the can and you squeeze the handles together
Speaker 1: and it pierces the can, and you turned the little
Speaker 1: key like device and it rotates the can and you
Speaker 1: open it up. No, it didn't look anything like that. Instead,
Speaker 1: it was what folks would later describe as a bayonet
Speaker 1: and sickle style can opener. So part of this can
Speaker 1: opener had a piece of metal that came to a point,
Speaker 1: and you would use this point this bayonet to pierce
Speaker 1: a hole in the lid of the can, and typically
Speaker 1: you were aiming at near the edge of the can,
Speaker 1: right near the edge of the top of the lid,
Speaker 1: so you pierce the lid. Then you would insert the
Speaker 1: sickle shaped part of the can opener into the hole
Speaker 1: you just made, and using a sawing motion, you know,
Speaker 1: using the end of the handle as like a lever,
Speaker 1: and pushing down and pulling up over and over and
Speaker 1: over again, you would force the blade of the sickle
Speaker 1: to cut through the tinned lid of your can. Now,
Speaker 1: according to Ezra's patent. This is quoting directly from the
Speaker 1: patent quote A child may use it without difficulty or
Speaker 1: risk end quote. However, a cursory examination of contemporary reports
Speaker 1: about this can opener, as well as the practice of
Speaker 1: what Grossers did at the time, suggests that maybe Ezra
Speaker 1: was being a little overly generous with his assessment of
Speaker 1: how easy his invention was to use, because most accounts
Speaker 1: say that the mines of the tin can, once you
Speaker 1: were done using this can opener on them, were jagged
Speaker 1: and sharp. There are more than a few articles that
Speaker 1: would joke about you had to be careful you could
Speaker 1: lose a finger in the process of trying to remove
Speaker 1: the lid that you had just sawn off the end
Speaker 1: of the can. Soldiers in the Civil War used the
Speaker 1: tool because, you know, they were already in a pretty
Speaker 1: dangerous situation, so throwing in the potential to lose a
Speaker 1: finger while getting at your beans was just part of
Speaker 1: the joys of war. I guess. The can openers were
Speaker 1: not sold to the general public. In fact, if you
Speaker 1: were to go to a grocer's as a regular citizen
Speaker 1: and you wanted to buy something that was in a tin,
Speaker 1: the grocer would actually go ahead and open the tin
Speaker 1: for you right there in the store. I'm assuming you
Speaker 1: would transfer the contents to something else, like a jar.
Speaker 1: But the reason for this was because you know, it
Speaker 1: required a bit of practice to get these cans open,
Speaker 1: and it required a lot of care to make sure
Speaker 1: you did so without cutting yourself. So again, this was
Speaker 1: not something that was sold to the general public. The
Speaker 1: advancements in ten can manufacturing meant that the cans themselves
Speaker 1: were becoming much more thin and light weight, and there
Speaker 1: were new methods made to a fix a lid to
Speaker 1: the top of a can. This also would improve things
Speaker 1: quite a bit. These methods meant the lids weren't harder
Speaker 1: to get into than Fort Knox the way they had
Speaker 1: been in the past. So you can actually create an
Speaker 1: alternative to the separate can opener, and in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: six a guy named Jay Osterholt received a patent for
Speaker 1: a new type of ten can, one where you could
Speaker 1: use a key opener with the can. Either the key
Speaker 1: would already be attached to the can, or you'd insert
Speaker 1: the flap of metal into the key and then bend
Speaker 1: it around the end of the key. Then you just
Speaker 1: twist the key. So it's sort of a predecessor to
Speaker 1: the poll tab opener that you see on a lot
Speaker 1: of cans these days. You can actually still find some
Speaker 1: types of tin foods that have a version of the
Speaker 1: key opener, like stuff like ten sardines often have a
Speaker 1: key opener on the lid, and as the name implies,
Speaker 1: the lid of the can has a little protrusion essentially
Speaker 1: that's shaped like a key, and it's either already attached
Speaker 1: to the lid or you attach it the way I
Speaker 1: just mentioned. When you twist the key, it starts to
Speaker 1: pry the lid off from the top of the ten,
Speaker 1: at least it's supposed to. I've never actually had much
Speaker 1: luck with these, but that's probably because I'm also left handed.
Speaker 1: Then I find it really awkward to hold the can
Speaker 1: and twist the key the way you're supposed to, because
Speaker 1: I want to do it the opposite way. So it's
Speaker 1: really frustrating for me to try and access these cans.
Speaker 1: But that's a me problem. Generally speaking, they worked really well,
Speaker 1: and actually a lot of different companies came up with
Speaker 1: different variations of this idea. So for a while, a
Speaker 1: lot of the cans that were coming out had some
Speaker 1: form of key used to peel back a lid so
Speaker 1: that you could get access to what was inside, and
Speaker 1: that was the primary way people got access to the
Speaker 1: food that were inside tended cans, at least for the
Speaker 1: general consumer. For things like commercial purposes like restaurants, or
Speaker 1: again like big organizations like the military, it was a
Speaker 1: different story. But for the general consumer that became kind
Speaker 1: of the go too. Now. Other inventors were still working
Speaker 1: to improve the design that Ezra Warner had come up
Speaker 1: with with the first can opener. One design I saw
Speaker 1: was kind of interesting. It also had a bayonet style
Speaker 1: piercer component to it. This will be a little tricky
Speaker 1: to explain in audio, but I'll give it a go.
Speaker 1: So imagine that you have a can opener that's essentially
Speaker 1: a handle, and it extends out at one point. You
Speaker 1: have an adjustable blade. It can move, you know, up
Speaker 1: or down the length of the can opener. At the
Speaker 1: very end of this tool, you have a hook, a
Speaker 1: sharp hook. And what you do is you take a
Speaker 1: can and instead of trying to poke a hole near
Speaker 1: the edge of the tin, which is the way Ezra's
Speaker 1: can opener worked, you would try and poke a hole
Speaker 1: in the center of the lid and the hook would
Speaker 1: stay in that hole. Meanwhile, you would adjust the blade
Speaker 1: that can move up or down the length of the
Speaker 1: can opener so that it would be right at the
Speaker 1: edge of the can's lid, so like right up against
Speaker 1: the lip of the can, and you would press down
Speaker 1: using the can opener like a lever, and pierce the
Speaker 1: blade into the edge of the can. Then you would
Speaker 1: twist the can and or you know, move the can
Speaker 1: opener in a circular direction around the can, and you
Speaker 1: would physically cut through the can lid so the hook
Speaker 1: would remain pierced in the center of the lid. It
Speaker 1: would act as sort of like a hub. I think
Speaker 1: of it almost like the spindle on a turntable with
Speaker 1: a record album. The hook would remain there and the
Speaker 1: blade would be on the edge of the tin, and
Speaker 1: you would just twist the can and push the handle
Speaker 1: of the can opener to start cutting your way around
Speaker 1: this circumference of the can. And at the end you
Speaker 1: could use that little hook in the center of the
Speaker 1: lid to help lift the lid out of the can
Speaker 1: and get access to the food inside. Again, you would
Speaker 1: end up with some pretty sharp edges. But I actually
Speaker 1: really dug the simplicity of this design. There are lots
Speaker 1: of videos online by the way of vintage can openers
Speaker 1: and folks demonstrating how these would work. Again, I would
Speaker 1: probably have a lot of trouble with them because it
Speaker 1: looks like most of them were made for right handers,
Speaker 1: so I would want to try and push the wrong way,
Speaker 1: which means the dull side of the blade would be
Speaker 1: what I'd be pushing against. I wouldn't get anywhere, But
Speaker 1: they are really really cool. Then we get to a
Speaker 1: guy named William Lyman around eighteen seventy, an old Billy
Speaker 1: created a can opener similar to the one I just described,
Speaker 1: where you would use a bayonet like hook protrusion on
Speaker 1: the end to pierce the center of the tin lid,
Speaker 1: and near the edge of the tin, you had again
Speaker 1: an adjustable blade, but this blade was shaped like a wheel,
Speaker 1: so it's not just a razor sharp blade that you
Speaker 1: would pierce into the edge of the can. It was
Speaker 1: a wheeled blade, and you'd push down hard enough to
Speaker 1: make that piercing and you would turn the can, and
Speaker 1: the wheeled blade would also turn as you were rotating
Speaker 1: the can and cut through the top of the lid.
Speaker 1: That wheeled blade would become a main component of modern
Speaker 1: can openers, but at this stage in the eighteen seventies,
Speaker 1: still looking at a pretty simple, purely mechanical gadget. Now,
Speaker 1: the process for manufacturing cans continue to advance significantly over
Speaker 1: the following decades, with companies finding new ways to make
Speaker 1: cans quickly and efficiently and consistently and out of progressively
Speaker 1: thinner materials while still being sturdy and stable and most
Speaker 1: importantly hermetically sealed. Various methods to affix lids to cans
Speaker 1: were being developed and deployed over the years. The humble
Speaker 1: can opener would also see lots of different variations as well,
Speaker 1: though nearly all of them involved putting in a pretty
Speaker 1: good amount of elbow grease to get the stuff what
Speaker 1: was inside the can safely out of it while also
Speaker 1: you know, keeping all your fingers intact in the process.
Speaker 1: So the next big advancement for can openers wouldn't happen
Speaker 1: until nineteen thirty one. So remember we were just in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy. Now we're all the way up to night
Speaker 1: teen thirty one, and there were a couple of big
Speaker 1: advancements that happened right around this time. First up was
Speaker 1: the invention of a guy named Charles Arthur Bunker, who
Speaker 1: got a patent in nineteen thirty one for this approach.
Speaker 1: So it was Bunker who created a toothed wheel system
Speaker 1: like gears inside the can opener. So you would position
Speaker 1: the can opener blade on the edge of a tin
Speaker 1: lid held in place by the can's lip, and you know,
Speaker 1: using leverage, you would pierce the lid of the tin
Speaker 1: and the geared wheels would actually grip the edge of
Speaker 1: the can's lid like that little lip. So they're gripping together,
Speaker 1: and when you would turn a handle on the end
Speaker 1: of the can opener, it would turn one of these
Speaker 1: two gears, and the other gear would also end up
Speaker 1: having to turn and this would force it would you know,
Speaker 1: pinch the can and force it to rotate, and thus
Speaker 1: it would be pressed again. And it's this wheeled blade
Speaker 1: that was part of the can opener, So you'd have
Speaker 1: to twist like a dozen times or so and you
Speaker 1: would have yourself an open can. The geared wheel component
Speaker 1: became the other major part of modern day manual can openers,
Speaker 1: coupled with that wheeled blade that came from William Lyman's
Speaker 1: invention in eighteen seventy. Now I need to mention there
Speaker 1: was actually another company that was using a dual wheel
Speaker 1: mechanism to grip a can for the purposes of cutting
Speaker 1: the lid open. And the company that made this was
Speaker 1: called the Star can Opener Company, And in fact, they
Speaker 1: sued Bunker's own company, the Bunker Clancy Company, because they said, well,
Speaker 1: we already made this invention, this mechanism of using this
Speaker 1: weeld system to grip a can so that when you
Speaker 1: turn a handle, you rotate the can and you can
Speaker 1: cut it open. So Bunker didn't actually invent that we
Speaker 1: did six years ago, but the lawsuit got thrown out
Speaker 1: for some reason or another. I'm not sure what happened,
Speaker 1: and it is weird that this company that had an
Speaker 1: invention that predated the patent by six years was essentially dismissed. Anyway,
Speaker 1: those gears made all the difference, I guess in that lawsuit.
Speaker 1: And Bunker's company would also introduce the world's first electric
Speaker 1: can opener, also in nineteen thirty one, and it too
Speaker 1: used those geared wheels to grip onto the lip of
Speaker 1: a tin can lid, and in this case, instead of
Speaker 1: having to manually turn a little handle over and over
Speaker 1: and over again, electricity would power a motor to make
Speaker 1: those wheels turn, and that would mean that the electric
Speaker 1: motor would cause the can to rotate, and the opener's
Speaker 1: blade would be pressed against the lid of the can
Speaker 1: and thus cut through the lid like Butta. Unfortunately for Bunker,
Speaker 1: he was a bit too far ahead of his time.
Speaker 1: The United States and the world in general was still
Speaker 1: in the process of electrification, and a lot of households
Speaker 1: had no been wired for electricity, and the ones that
Speaker 1: were didn't really have can opener on the priority list
Speaker 1: of the stuff what they wanted to have electrified. So
Speaker 1: the electric can opener dates all the way back to
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, but it would be another couple of
Speaker 1: decades before the technology would be considered practical for the
Speaker 1: average person and become a consumer item. In fact, the
Speaker 1: first commercially successful electric can opener design would launch in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, and it was a father daughter project.
Speaker 1: The father in this case was a guy named Walter
Speaker 1: Hess Bodele, and his daughter Elizabeth Bodle, contributed significantly to
Speaker 1: the actual design and esthetic of the device, and together
Speaker 1: they made a countertop electric can opener that was freestanding,
Speaker 1: It was attractive in that nineteen fifties kind of way,
Speaker 1: and it actually was a commercial success. Now this pretty
Speaker 1: much brings us up to speed on the general evolution
Speaker 1: of can openers. There are some bits that didn't really cover,
Speaker 1: Like there's the industrial bondser line of can openers. They
Speaker 1: kind of look like a combination of a vice and
Speaker 1: a with a crank on top. These were made for
Speaker 1: commercial operations like restaurants and such, so you would mount
Speaker 1: it on like an industrial table in like a you know,
Speaker 1: a restaurant setting, and you would place you know, your
Speaker 1: large canned goods, like the big cans of can food
Speaker 1: onto essentially a rotating platform that would sit at the
Speaker 1: base of this device. You would clamp the blade down
Speaker 1: and by turning the crank, you would rotate the can
Speaker 1: and cut open the lid. These were really useful, again
Speaker 1: in industrial settings, not so much for consumers, but they
Speaker 1: were really important. I also didn't cover a can opener
Speaker 1: that I really like, a style of can opener I
Speaker 1: really like. As I mentioned, I'm left handed, and that
Speaker 1: means that I would often struggle with, you know, the
Speaker 1: manual can openers. Even left handed designed can openers always
Speaker 1: felt weird to me, maybe because I had forced myself to,
Speaker 1: you know, struggle with a right handed can opener, and
Speaker 1: I mean it always looked like a horror show, like
Speaker 1: I did not do a good job at opening cans.
Speaker 1: When when my family finally got an electric can opener,
Speaker 1: when I was maybe like ten or so, I thought
Speaker 1: it was fantastic because suddenly I could open cans just
Speaker 1: like anyone else. But flash forward a few years back,
Speaker 1: I am shopping for an electric can opener and I
Speaker 1: found a hands free one and I actually really love it.
Speaker 1: And there are lots of different variations for this style
Speaker 1: of can opener, so I'm not going to call out
Speaker 1: the specific brand I have. There are lots of different
Speaker 1: ones that use the same principles, so you can find them,
Speaker 1: you know, in places like online stores and stuff. I'll
Speaker 1: just describe how it works. So it looks like it's
Speaker 1: just a little like handle, actually a thick handle because
Speaker 1: it is battery powered, so the batteries fit in this
Speaker 1: and you lay it across the top of a can,
Speaker 1: like flat out across the top of the can. It
Speaker 1: has a little section that goes over the edge of
Speaker 1: the lip, and when you press a button on the
Speaker 1: top of this can opener, it has wheels that grip
Speaker 1: that lip edge and a blade that cuts into the can,
Speaker 1: and then the motor turns the wheels and the whole
Speaker 1: can opener just rotates over the top of the can.
Speaker 1: It makes a full circle. Once it does, you hit
Speaker 1: the button again, you can lift the top off. Mine
Speaker 1: cuts the lid on the outside edge, so the whole
Speaker 1: like lip of the can comes off at the top
Speaker 1: and makes it really simple to remove and then access
Speaker 1: the food that's inside, and so just with a touch
Speaker 1: of a button, I can get into masspaghettios, which is
Speaker 1: absolutely brilliant in my mind. Like I said, there's lots
Speaker 1: of different variations on this specific design. But the interesting
Speaker 1: thing to me is that the elements that were in
Speaker 1: president in like William Lyman's can opener in eighteen seventy,
Speaker 1: that wheeled blade, or the one of from nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: one where you get the geared wheels in Bunker's design,
Speaker 1: those are all part of these hands free can openers too.
Speaker 1: They're still making use of those those innovations that are now,
Speaker 1: you know, in one case well over a century old,
Speaker 1: and then the other one we're getting pretty close to it.
Speaker 1: I just think that's really cool that it's just again
Speaker 1: slight variations on tried and true designs. But that's the
Speaker 1: story I found. Napoleon Bonaparte led to the creation of
Speaker 1: the can opener sort of, which is kind of similar
Speaker 1: to when I say that the reason we have lawnmowers
Speaker 1: is because folks in Europe really liked building castles and
Speaker 1: going to war with each other. I mean, who knows,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm going to find out that some other random
Speaker 1: and like I don't know, the adjustable office chair actually
Speaker 1: owes its existence to medieval warfare or something. We'll have
Speaker 1: to find out about that one. Anyway, I hope you
Speaker 1: found this history of the can opener interesting and understand
Speaker 1: now why it took almost fifty years from the invention
Speaker 1: of the ten can to get to the invention of
Speaker 1: the ten can opener, and maybe you have a greater
Speaker 1: appreciation for can openers. I know in my household, I
Speaker 1: really appreciated the electric can opener because again, it gave
Speaker 1: me the ability to access canned foods in a way
Speaker 1: that was much easier than the manual can opener method,
Speaker 1: which I always struggled with. And I also know there
Speaker 1: were other entities in my house that appreciated the can
Speaker 1: opener the way I did, and that would be my cats,
Speaker 1: because as soon as they heard the electric can opener going,
Speaker 1: they would flock to me, so they had I think
Speaker 1: the appropriate reverence for can openers something that we should
Speaker 1: all reflect on upon occasion, because tend food often gets
Speaker 1: a bad rap. But seriously, modern society wouldn't exist the
Speaker 1: way it does without it, and arguably without the can opener,
Speaker 1: that never would have been as important an invention. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I just thought it was an interesting topic to cover
Speaker 1: for an episode of tech Stuff. I hope you are
Speaker 1: all well, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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