Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Laurin Vogel bomb here. Aluminum cans are convenient, inexpensive,
Speaker 1: and generally sanitary ways to package and transport many foods
Speaker 1: and drinks. Now. Canning technology has existed since the first
Speaker 1: decade of the eighteen hundreds, but the ruttary blade can
Speaker 1: opener that we're familiar with today wasn't invented until the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies. For the seventy some intervening years, there were
Speaker 1: likely a lot of bashed or cut fingers from hammers
Speaker 1: and chisels, knives, and other less specialized or less safe tools.
Speaker 1: These days, can openers are widely available, but not every
Speaker 1: can needs one. Many canned foods and drinks come with
Speaker 1: a poll tab that's even more convenient. So why do
Speaker 1: some cans have them and others don't. The short answer
Speaker 1: is money, But for the long answer, let's look at
Speaker 1: the history of this innovation. The story goes that in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine, a humble engineer from Dayton, Ohio, by
Speaker 1: the name of Ernie Fras was enjoying a family picnic
Speaker 1: when he realized that he'd forgotten to bring a church
Speaker 1: key you see, although beer had cut in cans starting
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty five, those cans had solid lids, the
Speaker 1: same as any other can. To access the contents, you'd
Speaker 1: use a tool called a church key that would pop
Speaker 1: a hole in the lid. These are still sometimes used,
Speaker 1: especially in bars, to open things like canned pineapple juice.
Speaker 1: But so at this picnic, a Phrase searched in vain
Speaker 1: for something to open his beer with and settled on
Speaker 1: the bumper of his car, which resulted in a messy
Speaker 1: geyser of beer. Always the engineer, Phrase vowed to come
Speaker 1: up with an invention that would eliminate the need for
Speaker 1: a church key altogether. In nineteen sixty three, he patented
Speaker 1: the easy Open Been lid, a which, similar to modern
Speaker 1: beer and soda cans, had a shape scored into the
Speaker 1: top and a polltab riveted onto that shape at one end,
Speaker 1: so by pulling the tab, the weakened parts of the
Speaker 1: aluminum would give way and you could peel the scorge
Speaker 1: shape off, leaving a hole in the lid. Phrase's first
Speaker 1: customer was Iron City Beer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which marketed
Speaker 1: this revolutionary poll tab technology as the snaptop. Frase would
Speaker 1: pass away in nineteen eighty nine, but his company DRT
Speaker 1: is still making its patented easy open ends for food
Speaker 1: and beverage cans. For the article this episode is based
Speaker 1: on How Stuffworks, spoke with Tom Cruthers, who's worked at
Speaker 1: DRT for forty years, most recently as its VP of sales.
Speaker 1: They asked him why, at nearly sixty years after the
Speaker 1: invention of the easy open can, only some canned foods
Speaker 1: come with pole tabs while many still require a can opener.
Speaker 1: Crothers said, I wish all cans had easy open tabs
Speaker 1: with beep even busier. Basically, what it gets down to
Speaker 1: is a cost issue. Easy open ends are more expensive
Speaker 1: than sanitary ends, a sanitary end being the industry lingo
Speaker 1: for the solid can lids that require a separate can opener.
Speaker 1: You may have never thought twice about how your can of, say,
Speaker 1: tomato soup, was made. But this is precision engineering, just saying.
Speaker 1: DRT has divisions that deal with aerospace and medical manufacturing,
Speaker 1: and Crothers says that the metal packaging division there, which
Speaker 1: designs and sells the industrial machines that stamp out easy
Speaker 1: open ends, is much more precise than anything else. They do.
Speaker 1: The permissible variation in the measurements in their packaging products
Speaker 1: is mere microns across, the micron being one thousandth of
Speaker 1: a millimeter. Okay. There are two parts to every hand,
Speaker 1: the shell, which is the aluminum body, and the ends,
Speaker 1: which are the top and bottom. For a can with
Speaker 1: a plain old sanitary top, both ends are stamped from
Speaker 1: a flat sheet of metal and sealed to the shell
Speaker 1: with a process called double seaming. You can picture this
Speaker 1: double seam like two question marks attached by their crooks.
Speaker 1: All right, say you draw a normal question mark on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper. You can think of the straight
Speaker 1: vertical line of the mark as the side of the can.
Speaker 1: Then draw a second question mark, starting the tip of
Speaker 1: the crook inside the crook of the first one, and
Speaker 1: extending the straight line of the mark in a horizontal
Speaker 1: line over top of the first mark. That's your lid.
Speaker 1: The two crooks and the way that they curve around
Speaker 1: each other form the double seam. Manufacturers crimp them together
Speaker 1: using a bit of glue to seal them. This is
Speaker 1: not simple, but cans with a pole tab are more
Speaker 1: expensive because there are more steps to the manufacturing process. First,
Speaker 1: the end piece destined to be, the lid has to
Speaker 1: be scored with incredible precision. The scoring needs to be
Speaker 1: shallow enough that it remains strong enough to hold the
Speaker 1: contents inside, often under pressure or to withstand a fall
Speaker 1: from a store shelf. But the scoring has to be
Speaker 1: deep enough that the lid will pop open easily when
Speaker 1: the tab is pulled. That's why Drt's machines are tuned
Speaker 1: down to the micron. And then there's the poll tab itself,
Speaker 1: a separate piece of aluminum that needs to be stamped
Speaker 1: from a sheet of aluminum and riveted to the end.
Speaker 1: That extra material and tooling also costs money, which is
Speaker 1: passed on to consumers in the price of a poll
Speaker 1: tab can. There's no argument that easy open lids are
Speaker 1: well easier to open than containers that require a can opener,
Speaker 1: but that convenience comes at a cost. That's why you're
Speaker 1: more likely to find poll tabs on name brand items
Speaker 1: with a higher priced Cruther's explained a lot of the
Speaker 1: decision about whether to use an easy open end has
Speaker 1: to do with brand image. If you pick up a
Speaker 1: can of Progresso or Campbell's soup, you're going to find
Speaker 1: easy open ends. If you find a smaller brand or
Speaker 1: a store brand, those will most likely have sanitary ends.
Speaker 1: In some markets, particularly in the developing world, cost is
Speaker 1: the primary consideration. Even big brands might forego poll tabs
Speaker 1: in those markets to keep the price down. And then
Speaker 1: there are transport considerations. Since easy open lids are scored,
Speaker 1: they are slightly more likely to break open if traveling
Speaker 1: over rough roads. A sanitary end is going to be
Speaker 1: more secure in places with less developed infrastructure. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article why don't all food cans
Speaker 1: have polltabs? On HowStuffWorks dot Com written by Dave Ruse.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com, and it is produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
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