Days When People Used Swords and Hammers to Open Canned Food

In the early 19th century, consumers found it extremely difficult to open tinned food. Soldiers had to use swords, bayonets and even gunfire to open the tins. Sailors were told “to cut round on top with a chisel or a hammer.”

Housewives used household tools such as knives, screwdrivers and hammers to open the tins. Others asked shopkeepers to open them in their shops.

The early food tins were sometimes heavier than the food they contained!

The demand for tinned food was therefore lukewarm. Tinned food was mainly consumed by sailors and soldiers until it became available to the public in 1830.

The word “can” was coined in 1939 by book-keepers at Underwood’s cannery in Boston, USA, as an abbreviation for “canister.” William Underwood of England set up the first cannery in America during the 1920s. In British English, food that has been preserved by being sealed in a tin is called tinned food.

Penknife with blades

Peter Durand of England created the use of “vessels of tin or other metals” for “preserving animal and vegetable food.”

In 1855 cutler and surgical instrument maker Robert Yeates of England invented a penknife with blades that folded into a handle. The device proved useful as a can-opener.

Three years later, Ezra Warner of the US invented a two-bladed can-opener that was described as “part bayonet, part sickle.” Then came a tin with a key fixed to the top for opening. In 1970, William Lyman of the US introduced the first can-open with a cutting wheel.

A US company later promoted the modern form of rotary can-opener in 1927. It took 53 years before a British metal maker, William Cookson, invented the tear-open can.