Jason Bradwell's 365/366 Photo a Day Blog

The first pop cans were made of steel, not aluminum. Shasta claims to be the first company to can their drinks. The first beverage cans, steel and aluminum, required a can piecer to open. You know, that pointy can opener for your giant old-school 48oz juice cans? The pull-tab didn't come around until 1963. These early style tabs came off completely and were meant to be discarded, but many dropped them into the can, of course causing some geniuses to swallow the sharp pieces. The current tab design where the tab stays attached (unless you keep bending it back & forth until it comes off, oh what fun) came around in 1975.

Most beverage cans have a slightly tapered top and bottom. The metal on the lid of the can is significantly thicker than the metal on the sides. This means that a great deal of raw materials can be saved by decreasing the diameter of the lid, without significantly decreasing the structural integrity or capacity of the can. This results in savings of about 15% versus a non-tapered can.

The most recent advance in can design has been the "wide mouth" can — the opening was enlarged in the late 1990s by Mountain Dew originally. In 2000 Crown Holdings, Inc. has introduced an improvement in beverage end technology, named SuperEnd. The geometry reduces the aluminum content by 10% and creates a 'billboard' area, usable for brand logos and special messages.