Painter, William
Full Name: William Painter
Achievements: The bottle cap
Born: November 20, 1838; Triadelphia, Maryland
Died: July 15, 1906; Baltimore, Maryland (Aged 67)
Field & Discipline: Business; Engineering; Engineer. Inventor
Language: English
Father:: Dr. Edward Painter
Mother: Louisa Gilpin
Siblings: Unknown
Spouse: Harriet Magee Deacon
Children: Three
Education: Society of Friends' schools, Fallston, Maryland; Wilmington, Delaware
Major Work:
"Crown Cork" crimped tin bottle top
Life & Times:
An innovative youth, at age 17 Painter was apprenticed to a patent-leather manufacturing plant in Wilmington, Delaware. During the four years he worked there, he patented a fare-box, and a railroad car seat and couch. In 1859, he returned home to help his father, who had just opened a general store and post office.
During the six years he worked for his father, Painter patented a counterfeit-coin detector and a kerosene lamp burner. In 1865, he moved with his family to Baltimore, where he took a job as foreman in a machine shop.
Here, he built or improved various machinery, impressing his employers so much that they allowed him to work on his own inventions on company time, and take on outside consulting engineering work. Among his 35 inventions during the 20 years at the machine shop were an automatic magneto-signal for telephones, a seed-sower, a soldering tool, and several pump valves.
Soon after 1880, Painter began to study the number of devices used to stop bottles, and found them all ineffective. In 1885, after several years of experiments, he patented a wire-retaining rubber stopper, whose main feature was that it could be removed easily with one hand.
With backing from friends, Painter founded the Triumph Bottle Stopper Co. in Baltimore, which produced the "Triumph" stopper. Painter set about producing a better stopper, which he found he could make for a tenth the cost of the "Triumph."
Within a few months, he had set up the Baltimore Bottle Seal Co., and began manufacturing the "bottle seal," the first single-use bottle stopper other than corks ever produced. One of his salesmen was [hired] Gillette*, who would go on to make a fortune in razor blades.
Painter's bottle stopper was a huge success and provided a profitable business for the next seven years. But Painter still wasn't satisfied. In about 1891, Painter invented a single-use cap stopper of metal, and in 1892, patented it as the "Crown Cork" tin bottle cap, an invention that would soon be used all over the world.
To market the "Crown Cork", Painter reorganized the Bottle Seal Co. as the Crown Cork and Seal Co., of which Painter was secretary and general manager until he retired in 1903. Besides being responsible for much of the administrative work, he also directed the company's experimental work, inventing and patenting practically all of the machinery, not only to manufacture the caps, but to apply the caps to bottles.
In the course of his career he was granted 85 patents, the last one being issued after his death in 1906 at 67.
Extra Connections: His work related to that of [work related to] Schweppe* and [work related to] Joseph Priestley.*
Assessment: The crimped tin bottle cap was one of the 20th-century's most ingenious and prevalent disposable consumer items.
Oneliner: William Painter, American inventor of the bottle cap
Bibliography:
- American National Biography.
Obituary - "New York Times", July 17, 1906