The generic problem of meeting the often conflicting objectives of preservation and access is nothing new. The frustrations of getting at what nature packaged was certainly experienced long ago by many a tropical islander thirsting for the milk of a coconut, and solving the problem of getting at the contents seems clearly to have been more the consumer’s than the packager’s problem. Perhaps one of the most culture-laden of artificial beverage containers is the wine bottle, which has such strong traditions associated with it that even the slightest variations in form or color have come to be associated with different wines. It might easily be argued that the present form of certain wine bottles has from the first followed their function, but such reasoning would likely be after the fact. For example, the characteristics of champagne bottles—their heavy thickness, their punted bottoms, and their thick lips that provide an anchoring device for their mushroom-shaped corks—are all well suited to containing highly pressurized champagne while at the same time minimizing breaking, exploding, spontaneous uncorking, or the need for a corkscrew. It is less likely that all these characteristics were present de novo in champagne bottles than that they evolved one by one as the more conventional bottles in which champagne was first stored broke, exploded, or prematurely and unceremoniously popped their corks.
The different shapes of bottles in which, say, Rhine and Burgundy wines are stored more likely have their origins in accidental local variations and evolutionary changes in bottle making than in any prescribed subtle functional advantages of a long or a squat neck. Though it is possible to argue the advantages of one neck over the other in reducing the sediment decanted with the wine, say, it is most probable that that feature, if not just a happy accident of place, developed when decanting sediment with red wine became an unacceptable annoyance to at least one inventive mind in a position to do something about it. Thus, the functional correctness of putting sediment-prone red wines in bottles whose shoulders can trap sediment is more likely a result of the ruining of many a glass of wine decanted from earlier containers than the result of the anticipatory planning of some omniscient vintner. Conversely, putting sediment-free white wines in step-necked bottles would have required them to be upended to drain the wine. How much more elegantly emptied is the bottle with the long tapering neck.
The importance of bottle shape was underscored in a recent dispute between the government and a maker of a fortified wine called Cisco. The bottling of this potent wine, containing 20 percent alcohol, made it look like a wine cooler, whose alcohol content is only about 4 percent. Because of the similarity in packaging, stores shelved Cisco with wine coolers, and the more powerful drink was reportedly linked to alcohol overdosing and violence among teenagers, who came to call the new stuff “liquid crack.” To avoid future confusion between its fortified wine and the lighter coolers, the manufacturer declared that it would put Cisco in a newly designed bottle, one that would be “mature and masculine; certainly … unlike any wine cooler on the market.”
Even the color of wine bottles can be attributed to evolution fixed by tradition rather than by any firm functional determinism. Green and brown bottles are more likely to have evolved after sunlight was recognized to ruin wine in clear bottles than to have been devised in anticipation of the failure. But even invoking this argument is not to say that changes in form must follow recognitions of failure, for, though Sauternes are probably also affected by sunlight, they have traditionally been bottled in clear glass.
Regardless of its shape and color, a wine bottle must be sealed to protect its contents, and the cork is a natural sealing device. But, as effective as the cork is in helping the bottle perform the function of preserving wine, it is also a nuisance when one wants finally to open the bottle. Not only can the wine be ruined by a moldy cork, contaminated by a crumbly one, or made inaccessible by a stubborn one, but also we need an ancillary device to remove even the most accommodating of corks from unpressurized bottles. (The pressurized champagnes no doubt inspired the mushroom-shaped corks that can be coaxed out with the thumb after many a corkscrew-wielding hand had been wrenched back by a cork missile.) Like can openers, corkscrews and related devices have proliferated as the shortcomings of each existing one gave rise to a new, improved model. A few are almost foolproof tools, but even the most reliable can fail when encountering a bad cork. Some wine makers will confide sotto voce that real corks are an unnecessary expense and risk in these days of plastic, and that even the glass bottle itself is an unnecessarily awkward and expensive container for wine, but tradition is a strong persuader, especially in the wine industry, and only the least expensive wines tend to be sold in bottles with screw tops or in boxed bags with convenient spigots.
The bottling of beers has its own traditions and prejudices, of course, and they can seem to be as sacrosanct as those of wines, but uncapping a bottle involves an action different from extracting a cork. Yet, as if to acknowledge their roots, it was not so long ago that metal bottle caps had cork inserts, which were pulled tight against the mouth by the crimping action of the cap around the lip on the bottle’s neck. This was a relatively easy action to mechanize, but it also required a unique maneuver to undo the cap in order to drink the contents. When I have found myself with a bottle of beer and no opener, I have realized how difficult it can be to get the cap off without the specialized tool that did not exist before the cap. I have never been thirsty or brave enough to resort to using my teeth, but I have been able to find makeshift openers in the various nooks and crannies of door hinges and drawer pulls. It is also effective, even if time-consuming, to loosen with a nail file or a fork tine each of the crimps in succession around the cap until it can be pushed off with the thumb. What is common to all these emergency actions is that they rely on the mechanical principle of the lever; indeed, virtually all bottle openers have continued to work on that same principle.
As the development of the can opener followed at some distance the development of the tin can, so the specialized bottle opener emerged only after the bottle cap itself. As with cans, there is clear evidence that opening a bottle was not given as much thought as sealing it. In the early years of this century, for example, many more patents for bottle caps and capping machines appeared before patents for bottle openers did, and over the first decade of the 1900s patents for bottle-capping devices outnumbered those for opening them by about ten to one. Certainly the more immediate objective of bottlers was to keep their beverages fresh and intact in transit to the consumer, but how the customer was to open a bottle of beer should also have been a consideration in design and commerce.
The inconvenience of requiring a special opener to uncap a bottle is what led to the development of the screw top that is so familiar on beer bottles today. But, again, tradition and prejudice can affect whether a new form, even one that is a clear improvement in technology or a clear advantage in use, will be universally adopted. One of the disadvantages of requiring openers was that beer companies often had to supply them free, as matches were with cigarettes, lest the consumer be frustrated in attempting to consume the product. If the need for openers were eliminated, the expense of selling beer could be reduced—a clear advantage. This cost savings would naturally be most significant for lower-priced beers, which tended to have the largest volume of sales, and so these brands were more likely at first to embrace the new technology. This in turn meant that lesser-quality brews were associated with the twist-off cap, and so it has been somewhat eschewed by bottlers of premium and imported beers.
Soft drinks were long bottled much the same way as beer, and stationary openers were usually attached to the cooler or machine where the soft drink was purchased. Since, unlike beer, soft drinks tended to be consumed on the spot, this was no great inconvenience. However, another disadvantage of bottles has dominated the evolution of beverage containers: the logistics and cost of collecting and refilling them. When bottles were expected to be reused, they had to be strong and tough enough not only to hold their contents but als
o to survive the abuses of repeated handling, transportation, and washing by both humans and machines. Since chips, nicks, and scratches weaken a glass bottle just as they do a window-pane, it was necessary to make early bottles especially heavy. The twenty-four-ounce-capacity bottles that Montgomery Ward sold for home use in 1922, for example, weighed almost two pounds each.
A beverage container that was disposable like a tin can would be a much better solution from the beer or soda company’s point of view, of course—if the customer would accept the idea and pay for it. Neither consumers nor merchants would have to devote space to collecting empty bottles, and there would be transportation and sanitary advantages. The plastic soda bottle invented by Nathaniel Wyeth was one way of dealing with the objections to glass bottles for soft drinks, and the features of the screw-top plastic bottle have clearly developed in response to the failures of its crimp-capped glass counterpart: removing the inconvenience of needing a bottle opener, reducing the weight to be carried to and from the store, and eliminating problems associated with breakage and germs. Unfortunately, as is not infrequently the case when the evolutionary process takes place at revolutionary speed, the newer technology is not without its own shortcomings and disadvantages. Because they are lighter, plastic bottles can be made in larger than traditional capacities, which in turn keeps their unit cost down. But larger bottles can be unwieldy to pour from, and the soda often goes flat well before the plastic bottle is empty. However, the problem of what to do with used plastic bottles may be their greatest single shortcoming at the present time, as it is with virtually every single-use type of container or packaging.
The disposable can has developed into another alternative to the glass beer or soda bottle, but at first beverage cans were not much different from tin cans for food. In particular, they were formed from three pieces of tin-plated steel: one rectangular piece bent into a hollow cylinder and welded along its seam, with two circular disks for the top and bottom. And, of course, the can required an opener, but, since the contents were liquid, only a hole large enough to make a pouring spout was required. Indeed, anyone who tried to open a can of beer by jerking a Bull’s Head opener around its rim would have sloshed the contents all over the place, not to mention risking a jagged lip of first steel and then flesh. Thus, the specialized beverage-can opener known as a church key was developed to pierce the pressurized can with minimum jolting and make a wedge-shaped opening. Ideally, a single pie-slice wedge—i.e., one that extended to the center of the can top—would have allowed the can to be opened with only one motion, and the long opening would have enabled air to enter the can as its liquid exited. However, because early beer cans had relatively heavy steel tops, the applied mechanics of the opener played a role in determining its form, which dictated that it make a much smaller wedge-shaped incision close to the edge of the can.
A church key is a simple lever whose fulcrum hooks under the top lip of a can. The handle extending outward from the can provides one arm of the lever, and the pointed cutting edge extending over the can top provides the other. As with all levers, the length of the handle magnifies the effect of the force applied to its end, but, by the same token, the piercing force diminishes as the distance from the fulcrum to the tip of the cutting edge is increased. Thus, in order to make a church key that is not too long (cost is proportional to amount of material used) and yet is capable of piercing the can top without being bent out of shape, a compromise opener was developed that produced a relatively small hole close to the edge of the can. Drinking beer through such a hole is only slightly less objectionable than drinking it through a straw, and pouring it is a slow, gurgling procedure. Therefore, a venting hole on the opposite side of the top came customarily to be made. (Homemakers were used to putting two holes in a can top, for condensed milk had long come in tin cans that were opened by stabbing the top at two points with the tip of an old-style can opener.)
Specialized tin cans were precursors of what was to replace the steel beverage can. Sardines were always a problem food to pack and unpack, for they were to be served whole and yet they flaked and fell apart easily if poked with a fork or caught on the ragged edge of the can. Because sardines are so fragile, they came to be packed in tins that allowed the can to be laid flat. Furthermore, since a conventional opener would slash the contents of the can before exposing them, a special key was soldered to the bottom of the tin so that its top could be opened cleanly and completely by being rolled back upon the key, thus presenting the tightly packed fish as whole as they could be. To this day, special sardine forks sold by the German silversmith Wilkens, for example, have widely spaced tines to give plenty of support to the sardine, lest it break while being lifted, and the points of their tines are connected by a silver bar so that they cannot pierce and flake the fish in serving it.
The idea of a sardine can long survived in such diverse applications as cans for coffee, peanuts, and tennis balls. These cans no longer come with keys attached to their bottoms but, rather, have pull rings riveted to their tops, which are scored along their periphery, where they are designed to fissure, and indented across their width to give them sufficient stiffness so they will not buckle and pull the sides of the can together in the process of opening. With the proper design of fracture lines and stiffening ridges, a top can be removed in a predetermined way without a separate opener and leave no rough edges to scratch the contents or the hand reaching for them.
Some consumers seem less squeamish than others about the use of cans. There is a television commercial in which a big burly guy crushes a beer can against his forehead, and I get a headache every time I see it. Even though I know that today’s beer cans are pretty flimsy, and that squeezing the sides of the can just as it strikes the forehead makes it collapse harmlessly, my childhood memories of tin cans overrule any adult understanding I might have. I have yet to summon the courage to test my engineering predictions by crushing a can against my own forehead.
A good deal of our visceral sense about how physical things behave is formed in our childhood, when we have more time and fewer inhibitions about looking closely at and experimenting with the stuff that we find all about us. My own sense of the strength of a beverage can was probably established by the time I was about seven years old. That was in the days before television occupied children’s afternoons, and my friends and I looked for entertainment wherever we found it. Coming upon an empty can in the street could keep us busy till dark.
Whoever among us found the can would stomp on its side until the top and bottom curled around his shoe and locked into place like the clamps on an old roller skate. The can fit our foot like a clodhopper and, as we walked along the concrete sidewalk, made a noise heard round the block. As our group came across other empty cans, we would stomp them into more tin overshoes and have a grand time making noise and seeing who could wear the cans as shoes longest.
Getting a good fit with a tin can was no simple matter, for the cans seemed very strong to the foot of a seven-year-old, and a misdirected stomp that hit the unyielding end rather than the side of the can could be felt for days. At the same time, once the top and bottom had begun to curl around the foot, a more delicate touch was required lest the makeshift overshoe fit too tightly. Stomping cans in hard-soled shoes worked best, but we often wore canvas sneakers—high-topped Keds—and in those our feet were especially vulnerable to the revenge of the heavy tin can, if we could get the noisy toy to hold to them at all.
After such childhood experiences with it, the can as beverage container held little interest for me when I grew older. I have certainly bought my share of six-packs, but the cans themselves were not the focus of my attention. I thought that a can was a can—unless it was to be made into a kid’s shoe. But we were not kids anymore, and none of my college buddies ever even joked about smashing a can against his forehead. If we had been asked what we thought would happen if we did such a thing, we would probably have said something between a large gash and a frontal lobotomy.
In the late 1950s, I was aware of few complaints about beverage cans. In fact, they were convenient but otherwise unremarkable things, although there may have been some talk about a growing litter problem. Aside from their taller shape, beer cans were not unlike the familiar tins containing food, but opened with a church key instead of a can opener. However, while consumers drank contentedly, the brewing industry was concerned about the steadily rising cost of tinplate—the tin-coated steel out of which the cans were made. Kaiser Aluminum had initiated research-and-development efforts in the early 1950s and produced a lightweight and economical aluminum can in 1958. At the same time, the Adolph Coors Company and Beatrice Foods had joined in their own research-and-development program, and in early 1959 the first Coors beer was sold in seven-ounce returnable aluminum cans the brewer made itself. (Hamm’s and Budweiser did not get their first lightweight cans for another four years, when they were able to buy them from Reynolds Metals and Alcoa, respectively.)
The new cans were revolutionary not only in their raw material but also in how they were made. Whereas the relatively heavy old tin cans comprised three pieces, an aluminum can begins with a disk of metal that is first pushed into the shape of a cup that looks not unlike a tuna can, and then it is stretched to make the taller sides of the one-piece bottom. After the can is filled, a top is crimped on. This same basic procedure is used to make today’s aluminum can, though various improvements have been incorporated over the last three decades, especially in reducing the amount of metal involved. In the early years, one pound of aluminum made fewer than twenty cans; today, almost thirty cans come out of the same amount. The thickness of the can wall is less than five-thousandths of an inch, about the same as a magazine cover.
The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to Be as They Are. Page 22