Beverage can
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Image:Beverage can.JPG Image:Diet Coke.jpg A beverage can is often an aluminium can manufactured to hold a beverage for consumption for a single time only. See also aluminium can.
The earliest kind of metal beverage can was made out of steel (similar to a tin can) and had no pull tab. Instead, it was opened by using a tool called a can opener or bottle opener (colloquially, a church key). The opener resembled a bottle opener but had a sharp point. The can was opened by punching two holes in the lid, a large one for drinking through, and a small one that allowed air in to replace the displaced fluid. Further advancements saw the end pieces of the can made out of aluminium instead of steel.
The first kind of all aluminium can was the same as its forebears, which all still used the church key to open them. In 1959 Ermal Cleon Fraze invented the familiar pull-tab version, which had a ring attached at the rivet for pulling, and which would come off completely to be tossed aside. He received U.S. patent No. 3,349,949 for his pull-top can design in 1963 and sold his invention to Alcoa and Pittsburgh Brewing Company.
The original pull tabs were actually pop tops where the tabs came off in the user's hand, which allowed people to make curtains out of them by hooking the popped off tabs to one another to make a chain. Enough chains side by side and you had a curtain.
Some people dropped the tab into the can after opening it, rather than finding a wastebasket in which to throw the tab away. They then drank the beverage directly from the can, occasionally swallowing the sharp-edged aluminium tab by accident and causing themselves horrible internal injuries as the tab slashed its way down their throat and through their digestive system.
Fixed pull tabs followed in development, partly to prevent the injuries caused by removable tabs.
Several alternatives to the pull tab have been trialed with little commercial success. One notable variation was the press button can which effectively featured two pre-cut holes (one large, one small) in the top of the can, with these holes sealed with a simple plastic membrane. By design, these buttons were also held firmly closed by the outward pressure of the carbonated beverage contained within.
To open the can, the consumer would press both buttons into the body of the can, thus opening one through which to drink the beverage, the other to provide sufficient air to allow the contents to flow more easily. The buttons would remain attached to the can, alleviating the earlier issues with pull tab ingestion.
A major disadvantage of this closure method was that a consumer could open a press button can and either remove, replace or taint its contents, before agitating (shaking) the can with sufficiently enough to force the press buttons to re-seal the can, with little evidence of the can ever being tampered with. Another disadvantage was that in the process of pressing the buttons (particularly the larger drinking button) it was too easy for the consumer to either cut themselves on the sharp edge of either hole or get a finger stuck inside the can whilst attempting to open it.
One prominent design feature of beverage cans is that they almost invariably have a slightly tapered top and bottom. Under examination, it is seen that the metal on the lid of the can is significantly thicker than the metal on the sides. This means that a great deal of raw materials can be saved by decreasing the diameter of the lid, without significantly decreasing the structural integrity or capacity of the can. In fact, the amount of taper on the average aluminium beverage results in a savings of about 15% versus a non-tapered can. This structural integrity becomes apparent in the construction of beeramids - pyramid-shaped stacks of empty cans popular in some college dormitories.
The most modern advance in can design has been the 'wide mouth' can -- the opening for the liquid to come out has been enlarged.
Older can designs
There were also cans called conetops and crowntainers that were shaped like an old brake fluid can from the 70's. There were three types of conetops: high profile, low profile, and j-spout. The low profile and j-spout were the earliest, dating from about 1935, the same as the flatop cans that had to be opened with an opener. The crowntainer was a different breed of can that was drawn steel with a bottom cap and the favorite of some collectors. Crowntainers and conetops were made by various breweries until the late 1950s but not every brewery made every the varieties mentioned above.