A Painter, a Bottle Cap and a Close Shave

On this day, back in 1892, Baltimore’s William Painter patented the Crown Cork (US patent 468,258), the first bottle cap. This fact brings back memories…

No, I am not old enough to remember 1892, but I am old enough to remember when all soda bottles, not just beer, sported a cork-lined crown of metal. I also remember walking along streets in West Baltimore that were “decorated” with many of these discarded bottle caps, embedded in the surface of my childhood black asphalt jungle. I remember the tall, elegantly thin glass bottles of soda of the time, and I remember visiting Mexico, years later, and going to a soda shop in Guadalajara that served sodas in similar glass bottles. (Of course, because of returning bottles for deposits and recycling, maybe some of these were even some of the same bottles.) Later, I remember my time at the Baltimore Museum of Industry as its Development / Marketing Director. At the museum, the Crown Cork & Seal Company (renamed from the Bottle Seal Company, due to the success of the new crown cork) was featured prominently on the museum’s Maryland Milestones wall of fame. The company, no longer based in Baltimore, is now known as Crown Holdings, but I do remember them as a contributor to the museum. And, reportedly, it was the crown cork, the first popular disposable product, that actually inspired a salesman for the company, King C. Gillette, to invent an equally successful throwaway product – the disposable razor.