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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff Laurin Vogel bomb here. Aluminum cans are convenient, inexpensive,

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Speaker 1: and generally sanitary ways to package and transport many foods

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Speaker 1: and drinks. Now. Canning technology has existed since the first

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Speaker 1: decade of the eighteen hundreds, but the ruttary blade can

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Speaker 1: opener that we're familiar with today wasn't invented until the

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventies. For the seventy some intervening years, there were

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Speaker 1: likely a lot of bashed or cut fingers from hammers

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Speaker 1: and chisels, knives, and other less specialized or less safe tools.

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Speaker 1: These days, can openers are widely available, but not every

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Speaker 1: can needs one. Many canned foods and drinks come with

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Speaker 1: a poll tab that's even more convenient. So why do

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Speaker 1: some cans have them and others don't. The short answer

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Speaker 1: is money, But for the long answer, let's look at

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Speaker 1: the history of this innovation. The story goes that in

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine, a humble engineer from Dayton, Ohio, by

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Speaker 1: the name of Ernie Fras was enjoying a family picnic

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Speaker 1: when he realized that he'd forgotten to bring a church

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Speaker 1: key you see, although beer had cut in cans starting

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Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty five, those cans had solid lids, the

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Speaker 1: same as any other can. To access the contents, you'd

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Speaker 1: use a tool called a church key that would pop

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Speaker 1: a hole in the lid. These are still sometimes used,

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Speaker 1: especially in bars, to open things like canned pineapple juice.

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Speaker 1: But so at this picnic, a Phrase searched in vain

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Speaker 1: for something to open his beer with and settled on

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Speaker 1: the bumper of his car, which resulted in a messy

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Speaker 1: geyser of beer. Always the engineer, Phrase vowed to come

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Speaker 1: up with an invention that would eliminate the need for

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Speaker 1: a church key altogether. In nineteen sixty three, he patented

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Speaker 1: the easy Open Been lid, a which, similar to modern

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Speaker 1: beer and soda cans, had a shape scored into the

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Speaker 1: top and a polltab riveted onto that shape at one end,

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Speaker 1: so by pulling the tab, the weakened parts of the

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Speaker 1: aluminum would give way and you could peel the scorge

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Speaker 1: shape off, leaving a hole in the lid. Phrase's first

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Speaker 1: customer was Iron City Beer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which marketed

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Speaker 1: this revolutionary poll tab technology as the snaptop. Frase would

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Speaker 1: pass away in nineteen eighty nine, but his company DRT

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Speaker 1: is still making its patented easy open ends for food

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Speaker 1: and beverage cans. For the article this episode is based

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Speaker 1: on How Stuffworks, spoke with Tom Cruthers, who's worked at

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Speaker 1: DRT for forty years, most recently as its VP of sales.

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Speaker 1: They asked him why, at nearly sixty years after the

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Speaker 1: invention of the easy open can, only some canned foods

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Speaker 1: come with pole tabs while many still require a can opener.

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Speaker 1: Crothers said, I wish all cans had easy open tabs

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Speaker 1: with beep even busier. Basically, what it gets down to

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Speaker 1: is a cost issue. Easy open ends are more expensive

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Speaker 1: than sanitary ends, a sanitary end being the industry lingo

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Speaker 1: for the solid can lids that require a separate can opener.

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Speaker 1: You may have never thought twice about how your can of, say,

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Speaker 1: tomato soup, was made. But this is precision engineering, just saying.

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Speaker 1: DRT has divisions that deal with aerospace and medical manufacturing,

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Speaker 1: and Crothers says that the metal packaging division there, which

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Speaker 1: designs and sells the industrial machines that stamp out easy

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Speaker 1: open ends, is much more precise than anything else. They do.

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Speaker 1: The permissible variation in the measurements in their packaging products

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Speaker 1: is mere microns across, the micron being one thousandth of

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Speaker 1: a millimeter. Okay. There are two parts to every hand,

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Speaker 1: the shell, which is the aluminum body, and the ends,

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Speaker 1: which are the top and bottom. For a can with

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Speaker 1: a plain old sanitary top, both ends are stamped from

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Speaker 1: a flat sheet of metal and sealed to the shell

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Speaker 1: with a process called double seaming. You can picture this

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Speaker 1: double seam like two question marks attached by their crooks.

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Speaker 1: All right, say you draw a normal question mark on

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Speaker 1: a piece of paper. You can think of the straight

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Speaker 1: vertical line of the mark as the side of the can.

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Speaker 1: Then draw a second question mark, starting the tip of

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Speaker 1: the crook inside the crook of the first one, and

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Speaker 1: extending the straight line of the mark in a horizontal

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Speaker 1: line over top of the first mark. That's your lid.

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Speaker 1: The two crooks and the way that they curve around

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Speaker 1: each other form the double seam. Manufacturers crimp them together

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Speaker 1: using a bit of glue to seal them. This is

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Speaker 1: not simple, but cans with a pole tab are more

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Speaker 1: expensive because there are more steps to the manufacturing process. First,

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Speaker 1: the end piece destined to be, the lid has to

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Speaker 1: be scored with incredible precision. The scoring needs to be

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Speaker 1: shallow enough that it remains strong enough to hold the

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Speaker 1: contents inside, often under pressure or to withstand a fall

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Speaker 1: from a store shelf. But the scoring has to be

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Speaker 1: deep enough that the lid will pop open easily when

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Speaker 1: the tab is pulled. That's why Drt's machines are tuned

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Speaker 1: down to the micron. And then there's the poll tab itself,

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Speaker 1: a separate piece of aluminum that needs to be stamped

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Speaker 1: from a sheet of aluminum and riveted to the end.

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Speaker 1: That extra material and tooling also costs money, which is

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Speaker 1: passed on to consumers in the price of a poll

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Speaker 1: tab can. There's no argument that easy open lids are

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Speaker 1: well easier to open than containers that require a can opener,

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Speaker 1: but that convenience comes at a cost. That's why you're

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Speaker 1: more likely to find poll tabs on name brand items

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Speaker 1: with a higher priced Cruther's explained a lot of the

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Speaker 1: decision about whether to use an easy open end has

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Speaker 1: to do with brand image. If you pick up a

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Speaker 1: can of Progresso or Campbell's soup, you're going to find

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Speaker 1: easy open ends. If you find a smaller brand or

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Speaker 1: a store brand, those will most likely have sanitary ends.

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Speaker 1: In some markets, particularly in the developing world, cost is

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Speaker 1: the primary consideration. Even big brands might forego poll tabs

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Speaker 1: in those markets to keep the price down. And then

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Speaker 1: there are transport considerations. Since easy open lids are scored,

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Speaker 1: they are slightly more likely to break open if traveling

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Speaker 1: over rough roads. A sanitary end is going to be

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Speaker 1: more secure in places with less developed infrastructure. Today's episode

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Speaker 1: is based on the article why don't all food cans

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Speaker 1: have polltabs? On HowStuffWorks dot Com written by Dave Ruse.

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Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com, and it is produced by

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Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the

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Speaker 1: favorite shows.