Thursday, June 19, 2008

Progress

Big strides were made today. Our back porch is gone. It only took them about 45 minutes to rip it off. They've also scraped and primed the north and west sides of the house. It already looks much better! While digging up the porch, they found an old Pabst Blue Ribbon can, old enough that it didn't have a pull tab. How far back did you have to use a tool to open a can of beer?

Before:
After:



1 comment:

Dean Hargett said...

1963.

The Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company in Newark, New Jersey had suffered like most regional breweries during prohibition. American Can’s offer to build a canning line and to pay for the initial test batches convinced Krueger to submit their beer to the can test. In June of 1934 four cans of beer each were delivered to one thousand homes in the Richmond, Virginia area. They were delivered with a questionnaire and the results were better than anyone expected. By January 1935 Krueger’s canned beer was being sold throughout the city.

And so the beer can was born. But the cheaper cans presented an unexpected challenge, especially for smaller breweries, in that they required a completely new packaging line. The problem was solved with bottle shaped, called cone top, cans that could be sealed with crown caps just like bottles. This provided the smaller breweries with a can that they could run through their old bottling lines. They could enjoy the cost effectiveness of the cans without having to retool their packaging lines. As breweries went out of business or upgraded their equipment the cone top cans slowly disappeared and by 1960 were gone entirely.

In 1963 the first pull tab beer cans appeared on the market. Pittsburgh Brewing Company used the tabs on their iconic Iron City Beer and consumers loved them. But these easily removable strips of metal caused a whole new set of problems. Litterbugs seemed determined to scatter the sharp metal tabs everywhere. Pets and wild animals often choked on them and they cut swimmers’ feet at the beach. In 1975, the first fixed or stay tab beer can was introduced by Falls City Brewing Company of Louisville, KY. The design caught on has remained relatively unchanged since.
http://beer.about.com/od/historyofbeer/a/BeerCanHistory_2.htm