Seeds Of Innovation

“DOING WHAT COMES ARTIFICIALLY” (by Miles R. McCarry, Summer 1999) brought back old memories and reinforced for me the fact that inventions often find uses far removed from their original purposes. In 1959 the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) sought to develop an easy-open can end to salvage a container development using a composite foil-and-card-board laminated body stock. Conventional can openers would not be useful for the container, which was for frozen orange juice. No one had ever devised a way of affixing a pull tab while retaining the integrity of the package until Alcoa engineers hit on the idea of utilizing the cold-weld process and began working with the United Shoe Company, the holder of the patent rights, to attach an aluminum tab to a pre-scored aluminum can end.

The most important use of cold welding at the time was in the sealing of individual aluminum foil packages of semen used in artificial insemination. I can still recall the United Shoe development engineer telling us of attempts to collect semen. The tabs Alcoa developed, which were used by Minute Maid, were not completely effective, but they led the way to Ermal C. Fraze’s invention, at Dayton Reliable Tool and Manufacturing, in Ohio, of an integral rivet for attaching a tab—which made possible the pop top. Thus did invention take seed.