William Painter (November 20, 1838 – July 15, 1906) was an American mechanical engineer, inventor and the founder of Crown Holdings, Inc., a Fortune 500 company. He most notably invented the crown cork bottle cap and bottle opener.
Early life and career
Painter was born in 1838 in Triadelphia, then a mill town in Montgomery County, Maryland to Dr. Edward Painter and Louisa Gilpin Painter.[2] He moved to Baltimore, Maryland in 1865 to begin a career as a foreman at the Murrill & Keizer's machine shop. He worked with manufacturers to develop a universal neck for all glass bottles and started the Crown Cork & Seal Company of Baltimore in 1892 to manufacture caps that could be used to seal the universal necks.[3]
Patents
Painter patented 85 inventions, including the common bottle cap, the bottle opener, a machine for crowning bottles, a paper-folding machine, a safety ejection seat for passenger trains, and also a machine for detecting counterfeit currency.
He was inducted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.[4]
References
- ^ "MoCo's Lost City: Triadelphia". The MoCo Show. Retrieved March 15, 2021.
- ^ Painter, Orrin Chalfant (1914). William Painter and his father, Dr. Edward Painter: sketches and reminiscences. Baltimore: Arundel Press. p. 41. Retrieved March 15, 2021.
- ^ "History and Timeline". Crown Holdings, Inc. Retrieved March 15, 2021.
- ^ "Inductees: William Painter". National Inventors Hall of Fame. Retrieved March 15, 2021.
External links
- William Painter and his father, Dr. Edward Painter: sketches and reminiscences by Painter's son, Orrin Chalfant Painter (1914).
- Painter's obituary in the August 1906 edition of The Western Brewer.
- Crown Cork Bottle Cap - U.S. Patent #468258.
- Capped Bottle Opener - U.S. Patent #514200.
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