Can Openers

The earliest can openers were not like those we know, with revolving cutting blades. Early cans, from the 1830s to the 1870s, had filling holes over which caps were soldered or cemented tight after boiling. Until the 1850s, cans were opened by chiseling a new hole in their tops.

The first patented opener in the United States dates from 1858. It has a piercing bar that is hammered into the tin to make a starter hole into which a rocking cutter blade is inserted. The simplest can openers work the same way in the twenty-first century. Because cans came in so many sizes and shapes, it was useful to be able to adjust the distance between piercing bar and cutting blade; many patents were designed this way. A rocking-blade “sardine opener” was made to open boxy sardine cans and had a relatively small blade, which allowed it to go around the corners. Powerful metal-cutting shears called sardine shears, with small, sharp blades, could be used for sardine cans, corned beef cans, or even stovepipes. In the 1880s and 1890s, openers with round frames and rotating blades were made for the increasingly more standardized, cylindrical, commercial cans. The major collector of can openers in the United States has over five thousand different designs. Obviously, consumers have never thought their can openers worked perfectly.